Ecology of cliff ecosystems

我过去的研究表明，悬崖是地球上最被忽视但最有趣的栖息地之一。它们拥有古老的植物和动物群落，它们告诉我们地球气候的变化，它们代表了早期人类赖以生存的原始栖息地之一。在这里，我提出了一个新的研究计划，利用我的发现生态的岩石露头，并将这些知识应用到新的问题，环境异质性和干扰如何独立地组织生物系统。 这些新问题很重要，因为城市和荒野的植被管理计划都取决于理解破坏自然系统并邀请外来植物和动物入侵的力量。 目前，许多研究人员对环境异质性和干扰的作用感兴趣，但我相信这些人中的大多数人都在错误的系统上工作。 高生产力和物种丰富的系统不太可能有用，因为它们太复杂了，无法进行实验。相比之下，岩石露头系统具有低生产力和低物种丰富度，因此控制生物群落结构的力量可以更容易地在野外研究和实验中控制。 我将开始新的工作，进行有史以来第一次荟萃分析的已发表的数据，以发现在何种程度上异质性和干扰已被分离在过去的工作。从我的初步工作来看，我怀疑他们根本没有分开。 接下来，我将使用我的几个长期研究地点，其中包括不同程度地暴露于异质性和干扰的微型网站，以揭示一种或另一种力量调节田间植物生长的程度。 然后，我将在一些废弃的采石场进行实验，以发现空间异质性与生物量去除干扰影响植被的后续发展的程度。 最后，我们将研究在何种程度上占主导地位的城市岩石露头植物响应微生境的变化，而不是生物量去除干扰。 所有这些工作都将为我们对自然环境的理解和管理增添巨大的价值。

My past research has shown that cliffs are among the most ignored but interesting habitats on earth. They hold ancient plant and animal communities, they tell us about the changes in the earth's climate, and they represent one of the primal habitats that early humans depended on for their survival. Here I present a new research plan that takes advantage of my discoveries about the ecology of rock outcrops, and applies that knowledge to new questions about how environmental heterogeneity and disturbance independently organize biological systems.  These new questions are important to ask since vegetation management plans for cities and wilderness alike hinge on understanding the forces that disrupt natural systems and invite alien plants & animals to invade.  Many researchers are currently interested in the role of environmental heterogeneity and disturbance, but I believe that most of these people are working on the wrong kinds of systems.  Highly productive & species rich systems are unlikely to be useful because they are simply too complicated to experiment with. By contrast, rock outcrops systems have low productivity and low species richness and hence the forces that control biological community structure can be more readily controlled in field studies & experiments.  I will begin the new work by conducting the first-ever meta-analysis of published data to discover the degree to which heterogeneity and disturbance have been separated in past work. I suspect from my preliminary work that they have not been separated at all.  Next I will use several of my long term study sites that included microsites that are variously exposed to heterogeneity and disturbance, to uncover the degree to which one or the other set of forces regulates plant growth in the field.  Then I will conduct experiments at some abandoned quarries to discover the degree to which spatial heterogeneity versus biomass-removing disturbances influence the subsequent development of vegetation.  Lastly, we will examine the degree to which rock outcrop plants that dominate cities respond to microhabitat variability as opposed to biomass-removing disturbances.  All of this work will add great value to our understanding and management of the natural environment.