Collaborative research: Quantifying the ecosystem-wide impacts of a strong interactor in African watersheds

合作研究：量化非洲流域强相互作用因素对整个生态系统的影响

• 批准号: 1145829
• 负责人: Kelly Caylor
• 金额: $ 12.33万
• 依托单位: Princeton University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2012
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2012-05-01 至 2016-04-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1145829&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; research; Quantifying; ecosystem; wide

This award will initiate a collaborative research effort by ecologists, biogeochemists, and ecohyrdologists at the University of California at Berkeley and Princeton University to study how the common hippopotamus affects ecosystems - and how change to these ecosystems in turn affects the hippopotamus. Remarkably little is known about the importance of the common hippopotamus to the ecosystems that they inhabit, despite the fact that they are recognized to be a vulnerable and declining species. Hippopotamus rest in rivers and shallow lakes during the day and then emerge at night to feed on land. By virtue of these movements these large herbivores transfer vast quantities of nutrients and energy across the boundary between aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. These connections are likely to have a major influence on ecological properties and processes in each type of ecosystem. To identify these effects, the movement ecology of hippopotamus, the rates at which they vector nutrients across ecosystems, the impacts that these transfers have upon the ecology of recipient ecosystems, and how environmental physics (i.e. river flow, rainfall) influence all of the above factors will be studied.Results from this work will help us to understand how hippopotamus shape the ecology of adjacent ecosystems and how climate change and alterations in water use may disrupt these interactions. More broadly and importantly, this work will extend our general understanding of how transfers of material and energy influence the ecology of entire landscapes, how closely neighboring ecosystems are linked to one another, and how physical forcing determines the nature and importance of these connections. In addition to these important scientific contributions this project will provide training for national and international postdoctoral researchers, involve undergraduates in research, generate creative science media for the general public, and support science outreach programs in educationally underserved rural settings.

该奖项将在加利福尼亚大学伯克利分校和普林斯顿大学的生态学家，生物地球化学家和生态滞后学家进行合作研究工作，以研究共同的河马河马如何影响生态系统，以及对这些生态系统的变化如何影响河马。尽管事实被认为是一种脆弱和下降的物种，但人们对他们所居住的生态系统的重要性知之甚少。河马在白天休息在河流和浅湖中，然后在夜间出现以在陆地上进食。借助这些运动，这些大的草食动物将大量的营养和能量转移到水生生态系统之间的边界上。这些连接可能会对每种类型的生态系统中的生态特性和过程产生重大影响。为了确定这些影响，河马的运动生态学，它们在生态系统之间向培养物质养分的速率，这些转移对接受者生态系统生态学的影响以及环境物理学的生态学以及环境物理学（即河流流量，降雨，降雨）将如何研究上述所有因素。用水的变化和改变可能会破坏这些相互作用。更广泛，重要的是，这项工作将扩展我们对材料和能量转移如何影响整个景观的生态的一般理解，相邻的生态系统如何相互联系，以及物理强迫如何决定这些联系的性质和重要性。除了这些重要的科学贡献外，该项目还将为国家和国际博士后研究人员提供培训，涉及研究本科生，为公众提供创意科学媒体，并在教育乏味的乡村环境中为科学外展计划提供支持。