Postdoctoral Fellowship: CREST-PRP: Exploring the Impact of Heat-Waves and Nutrients on Bloom-Forming and Habitat-Building Seaweeds Along the South Florida Coast

CREST博士后研究计划（CREST-PRP）为活跃的CREST中心的个人早期职业科学家提供为期两年的研究，培训和指导经验。CREST-PRP的目标是增加STEM领域代表性不足的群体成员的STEM劳动力。CREST-PRP奖项旨在表彰具有巨大潜力的研究人员，并支持他们的研究经验，以拓宽他们的视野，促进跨学科的互动，并为CREST-PRP学者在科学界的领导地位做好准备。研究项目“CREST-PRP：探索热浪和营养物质对沿着南佛罗里达海岸的水华形成和藻类生长的影响”与CREST-PRP的目标直接一致。该项目由佛罗里达国际大学CREST水生化学与环境中心（CAChE）的博士后研究员提交，该项目将通过探索热浪和营养物质对水华形成和栖息地建设海藻的作用，调查气候变化和营养物质污染沿着南佛罗里达海岸的影响。海藻是一组多样化的初级生产者，对海洋生态系统的健康和繁荣至关重要。该项目将有助于预测这种压力源的组合将如何增加某些海藻的存在，这些海藻会影响它们所居住的生态系统，如珊瑚礁和海草床。气候变化和污染条件对海藻的影响将通过实地和实验方法进行研究，从而促进我们对这些影响的理解。此外，该项目将为佛罗里达国际大学的学生提供直接的教育和研究机会，从而在代表性不足的学生中促进科学，技术，工程和数学（STEM）教育。这些学生将被招募保留到FIU研究生课程，加强对成功的少数民族学生在干职业的支持。将提供数据，教育公众了解水质变化对生活质量、生态系统反应和珊瑚礁损失的直接影响，该项目将调查热浪和营养增加对南佛罗里达珊瑚礁上水华形成和关键藻类物种的影响，以了解这些变化如何危害水生环境和影响人类福祉。稳定的碳，氮，磷（C：N：P）在多个藻类物种的化学计量比将在原位分析沿着邻近近岸珊瑚礁的城市化走廊，并在所有季节。此外，该研究将试图通过在实验室围隔生态系统中培养海藻并使其受到不同的营养和温度制度的影响，测量藻类对模拟热浪的光合反应，并确定营养物质的代谢如何在营养和温度梯度上变化，来检测各种藻类物种和功能群的环境阈值。研究的海藻将包括多物种的藻类群落，以及所有四个主要海藻分支（Bangiophyceae，Florideophyceae，Phaeophyceae和Ulvophyceae）的代表，解决温度和营养物质的增加如何影响广泛的海藻群落，包括草坪藻类和甲壳珊瑚藻类。还将收集实地样本，作为植物标本馆标本保存（存放在金融情报室，并将照片扫描和元数据上传到在线大型藻类植物标本馆门户网站），在不同的保存时间后确定重复的C：N：P比率，从而为扩大历史植物标本馆样本的调查提供必要的初始数据。这项研究将扩展先前的结果，这些结果表明，只有5%的大型藻类属负责全球50%的海藻生物多样性，并且这一子集与海洋表面温度的升高显著正相关。该奖项反映了NSF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。

The CREST Postdoctoral Research Program (CREST-PRP) provides two years of support for research, training, and mentoring experiences for individual early career scientists at active CREST Centers. The goal of the CREST-PRP is to increase the STEM workforce presence of individuals who are members of groups underrepresented in STEM fields. CREST-PRP awards recognize investigators with significant potential and support their research experiences to broaden their perspectives, facilitate interdisciplinary interactions, and prepare CREST-PRP scholars for positions of leadership within the scientific community. The research project “CREST-PRP: Exploring the Impact of Heat-Waves and Nutrients on Bloom-Forming and Habitat-Building Seaweeds Along the South Florida Coast” is in direct alignment with the CREST-PRP goals. Submitted by a postdoctoral researcher affiliated with the CREST Center for Aquatic Chemistry and the Environment (CAChE) at Florida International University, the project will investigate the impact of climate change and nutrient contamination along the South Florida coast by exploring the role of heat waves and nutrients on bloom-forming and habitat-building seaweeds regionally. Seaweeds are a diverse group of primary producers that are critical to the health and prosperity of marine ecosystems. This project will be important in helping predict how this combination of stressors will increase the presence of certain seaweeds that affect the ecosystems they inhabit, like coral reefs and seagrass beds. The effects of climate change and pollution conditions on seaweeds will be studied with field and experimental approaches, thus advancing our understanding of these impacts. Additionally, this project will provide direct educational and research opportunities to Florida International University students, thus promoting Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) education amongst underrepresented students. These students will be recruited for retention into FIU graduate programs, enhancing support for successful minority students in STEM careers. Data will be made available to educate members of the public about the direct impact of changes in water quality on quality of life, ecosystem response, and the loss of coral reefs.This project will investigate the effects of heat waves and increased nutrients on bloom-forming and keystone algal species found on reefs in South Florida in an effort to understand how these changes may jeopardize the aquatic environment and affect human welfare. The stoichiometry ratios of stable carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorous (C:N:P) in multiple algal species will be analyzed in situ along an urbanization corridor adjacent to nearshore coral reefs and across all seasons. In addition, the study will attempt to detect environmental thresholds for a variety of algal species and functional groups by cultivating seaweeds in laboratory mesocosms and subjecting them to varying nutrient and temperature regimes, measuring algal photosynthetic response to simulated heat waves and determining how the metabolism of nutrients varies across nutrient and temperature gradients. Seaweeds studied will include multi-species communities of algae, and representatives from all four major seaweed clades (Bangiophyceae, Florideophyceae, Phaeophyceae, and Ulvophyceae), addressing how increasing temperature and nutrients affect broad communities of seaweeds, including those of turf algae and crustose coralline algae. Field samples will also be collected and preserved as herbarium specimens (deposited at FIU with photographic scans and metadata uploaded to the online Macroalgal Herbarium Portal), with replicate C:N:P ratios determined after varying preservation times, thus providing initial data necessary to expand surveys of historical herbarium samples. The research will expand upon prior results which showed that just 5% of macroalgal genera are responsible for 50% of global seaweed biodiversity, and that this subset of are significantly positively correlated with increasing sea surface temperatures, and thus more likely to expand during expected climate change scenarios.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.