URoL:ASC: Using Rules of Life to Capture Atmospheric Carbon: Interdisciplinary Convergence to Accelerate Research on Biological Sequestration (CARBS)

迫切需要有效的解决办法来减缓气候变化，并需要在近期和长期时间内实施适应性战略。联邦、州和地方政府在生物碳封存方面进行了大量投资，以缓解气候变化，但这些投资往往与社区适应气候引起的干扰（如干旱、野火和海平面上升）的优先事项不一致。为了应对这一挑战，我们提出了“加快生物封存研究的趋同”计划，这是一种建立在现有投资基础上的方法，以确保美国在减缓和适应气候变化方面的领导地位。碳水化合物将本土知识（IK）、人工智能（AI）和环境DNA （eDNA）结合到碳捕获研究中，以跨学科融合的3- d（发现、开发和部署）和3- p（协议、处方和教学法）为导向。我们将重点关注从太平洋西北部山区到沿海生态系统的工作景观，以回答以下问题：如何在不同的社会和生态背景下协调碳封存项目以获得最佳结果？如何将土地管理、恢复和保护作为一系列可供社区选择的选项，而不是单一的强制性模式？如何尽早与历史上被边缘化的社区接触，建立信任，促进创新，并鼓励采用技术来减轻气候对脆弱生态系统的影响？技术摘要地球上的生命依赖于从光到碳基分子的能量转化，这些碳基分子被代谢以建立和维持生物结构。代谢标度理论解释了生物体的代谢率如何随着生物量的增加而增加，这种关系在生物王国中跨越了许多数量级。这种“生命法则”是众所周知的，但理解基因组学（即信息处理）与生态系统的代谢（即能量处理）之间的关系仍然是一个挑战，特别是在社会和生态变化的情况下。碳水化合物结合了代谢缩放和集体行动理论来解决基本的生物学问题，同时为可持续的碳封存提供转化科学。我们将探索对二氧化碳和甲烷通量的社会生态和基因组控制，利用生态系统通量网络和遥感方面的现有投资，量化和绘制景观“代谢”图。我们将使用实验来测试理论，并构建新的人工智能工具，这些工具将提供首个将IK和eDNA应用于碳捕获的研究，并与社区在旨在改善土地管理和保护的迭代过程中共同生产。这将包括基于数据的生态系统碳通量预测，以及土壤微生物组的实验选择，以评估在人类工程系统中增加生物碳汇的潜力。我们的研究活动涵盖了陆地生物圈氧化还原潜力的整个范围，从山地森林到太平洋西北部的河口，其成果和方法可以作为全国乃至世界的典范。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Effective solutions to mitigate climate change are urgently needed and require adaptive strategies implemented on immediate and long-term timelines. Federal, state, and local governments have made major investments in biological carbon sequestration for climate change mitigation, but these investments are often at odds with community priorities to adapt to climate-induced disturbances such as drought, wildfire, and sea level rise. To address this challenge, we propose Convergence to Accelerate Research on Biological Sequestration (CARBS), an approach that builds on existing investments to ensure the US’ leadership in climate change mitigation and adaptation. CARBS combines Indigenous Knowledge (IK), Artificial Intelligence (AI), and environmental DNA (eDNA) into carbon capture research oriented by 3-Ds (discovery, development, and deployment) and 3-Ps (protocols, prescriptions, and pedagogies) of interdisciplinary convergence. We will focus on working landscapes, from montane to coastal ecosystems of the Pacific Northwest, to answer questions such as: How can carbon sequestration projects be coordinated across diverse social and ecological contexts for optimal outcomes? How can land management, restoration, and conservation be presented as a range of options for communities to choose from rather than a single mandatory model? How can early engagement with historically marginalized communities build trust, promote innovation, and encourage the adoption of technologies to mitigate climate impacts in vulnerable ecosystems?Technical AbstractLife on Earth depends on energy transformations from light into carbon-based molecules, which are metabolized to build and maintain biological structures. Metabolic scaling theory explains how the metabolic rate of organisms increases with their biomass, a relationship that spans many orders of magnitude in size across biological kingdoms. This “rule of life” is well-known, but understanding how genomics (i.e., information processing) relates to the metabolism (i.e., energy processing) of ecosystems remains a challenge, especially under social and ecological change. CARBS combines metabolic scaling and collective action theories to address basic biological questions while delivering translational science for sustainable carbon sequestration. We will explore socioecological and genomic controls on carbon dioxide and methane fluxes to quantify and map landscape ‘metabolism’, leveraging extant investments in ecosystem flux networks and remote sensing. We will use experiments to test theories and to build novel AI tools that will deliver the first study of IK and eDNA applied to carbon capture, co-produced with communities in an iterative process designed to improve land management and conservation. This will include data-enabled predictions of ecosystem carbon fluxes as well as experimental selection of soil microbiomes to assess the potential for increasing biological carbon sinks in human-engineered systems. Our research activities span the whole range of oxidation-reduction potential of the terrestrial biosphere, from montane forests to estuaries of the Pacific Northwest, with outcomes and approaches that can serve as a model for the nation and beyond.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.