LTER: Manipulating drivers to assess grassland resilience

LTER：操纵驱动程序来评估草原恢复力

• 批准号: 2025849
• 负责人: Jesse Nippert
• 金额: $ 712.2万
• 依托单位: Kansas State University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2020-12-01 至 2026-11-30
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2025849&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: LTER; Manipulating; drivers; assess; grassland

Grasslands provide many benefits to society. In the eastern portion of the Central Plains, tallgrass prairie is the most common type of grassland. Tallgrass prairies once supported vast herds of bison and elk, and now support cattle ranching. Native prairie grasses are highly nutritious for cattle and can withstand frequent grazing, making tallgrass prairie the most productive rangeland in the United States. Tallgrass prairies also provide habitat for commercially important game species including deer, turkey, and waterfowl. Additionally, the prairies regulate water and nutrient cycles, and help store carbon. Remaining tallgrass prairie is threatened by invasive species, climate change, and expansion of woody plants. Sustainable management of tallgrass prairies requires a deep understanding of how these threats affect species, water, and nutrient cycling. Decades of research at the Konza Prairie Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) site in Kansas have provided a deep understanding of how the prairie responds to environmental changes of many kinds. New research will focus on ecological resilience, identifying how plants and animals respond to natural disturbances (fire and grazing) and to the more recent challenges imposed by climate shifts and invasion of woody plants. This work will inform grassland restoration, management and conservation efforts throughout the Great Plains. Konza scientists will be active in education and outreach activities. For example, the Konza Environmental Education Program provides activities for thousands of K-12 students every year, illustrating the societal value of collecting long-term data. Konza scientists also provide community outreach and engagement for the public, land managers, conservationists, and policy-makers.Since 1980, the Konza Prairie LTER site has investigated how key drivers of grasslands globally - fire, grazing, and climatic variability - interact to influence tallgrass prairie structure and function. The conceptual framework of this renewal award builds on long-term studies, reflects the increasing complexity of research questions developed over the history of the site, and explicitly recognizes that tallgrass prairie pattern and process result from human alteration of ecological drivers at local (e.g., land use and management), regional (e.g., nutrient inputs) and global (e.g., climate change) scales. This research leverages long-term, watershed-scale manipulations of fire frequency and grazing by large ungulates, coupled with numerous plot-scale manipulations to test ecological theory and address timely questions regarding grassland responses to multiple, interacting global changes. Specifically, researchers will focus on mechanisms underlying sensitivity and resilience of ecosystem states in mesic grasslands. New research will utilize the array of ecosystem states that have emerged from previous landscape manipulations to refine the understanding of sensitivity, resilience, and ecosystem state change in tallgrass prairie. The research comprises four thematic areas: 1) continued watershed-level manipulations of historical drivers (fire and grazing), 2) experimental manipulations of global change drivers, 3) cessation or reversal of selected drivers to assess legacies, and 4) human intervention. Collectively, Konza Prairie research will advance ecological theory and improve our mechanistic understanding of ecosystem state changes by manipulating key drivers to alter ecological states while employing new analytical approaches to augment the value of Konza LTER’s long-term data sets. The research will provide new information critical for understanding, managing, and conserving grasslands globally, while concurrently addressing fundamental ecological questions to explain grassland dynamics in a changing world.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.

草原为社会带来了许多好处。在中部平原的东部，塔格拉斯草原是最常见的草原类型。塔格拉斯大草原曾经支持大量的野牛和麋鹿，现在支持牧场。当地的草原草对牛有很高的营养，可以经常放牧，使塔格拉斯草原成为美国最有生产力的牧场。塔格拉斯草原还为商业重要的游戏物种提供栖息地，大草原调节水和养分周期，并帮助储存碳。剩余的高草大草原受到木质植物的入侵物种，气候变化和膨胀的威胁。塔格拉斯大草原的可持续管理需要深入了解这些威胁如何影响物种，水和营养循环。在堪萨斯州的Konza Prairie长期生态研究（LTER）地点进行了数十年的研究，对草原对多种环境变化的反应有深刻的了解。新的研究将重点放在生态弹性上，确定动植物如何应对自然灾害（火和放牧），并应对气候变化和木质植物的入侵所面临的最新挑战。这项工作将为草原修复，管理和保护工作提供依据，整个大平原。 Konza科学家将积极从事教育和外展活动。例如，Konza环境教育计划每年为成千上万的K-12学生提供活动，以说明收集长期数据的社会价值。 Konza科学家还为公众，土地管理者，保护主义者和政策制定者提供社区外展和参与。1980年，Konza Prairie lter网站已经调查了全球草原的主要驱动因素如何 - 火灾，放牧和民用变异性 - 互动以影响Tallgrass Prairie的结构和功能。 The conceptual framework of this renewal award builds on long-term studies, reflects the increasing complexity of research questions developed over the history of the site, and explicitly recognizes that tallgrass prairie pattern and process result from human alteration of ecological drivers at local (e.g., land use and management), regional (e.g., nutrient inputs) and global (e.g., climate change) scales.这项研究利用了长期的，流域规模的火灾操作，并通过大型伸缩式凝结，再加上许多情节规模的操纵来检验生态理论，并解决了有关草地对多种相互作用的全球变化的及时问题。具体而言，研究人员将专注于介于介质草原生态系统状态的灵敏度和弹性的机制。新的研究将利用从以前的景观操纵中出现的一系列生态系统状态，以完善对塔格拉斯草原中敏感性，弹性和生态系统状态变化的理解。该研究包括四个主题领域：1）持续分水岭对历史驱动因素的操纵（火与磨碎），2）全球变化驱动因素的实验操作，3）停止或逆转选定驱动因素以评估遗产，以及4）人类干预。总体而言，Konza Prairie Research将通过操纵关键驱动因素来改变生态状态，同时采用新的分析方法来增强Konza Lter的长期数据集的价值，从而提高生态理论并提高我们对生态系统状态变化的机械理解。这项研究将为全球理解，管理和保护草地至关重要，同时解决基本的生态问题，以解释不断变化的世界中的草原动力。该奖项反映了NSF的法定任务，并通过使用基金会的知识分子优点和更广泛的影响审查标准来通过评估来诚实地支持。

项目成果

Watershed and fire severity are stronger determinants of soil chemistry and microbiomes than within-watershed woody encroachment in a tallgrass prairie system

与高草草原系统中流域内的木质侵占相比，流域和火灾严重程度是土壤化学和微生物组的更强决定因素

• DOI: 10.1093/femsec/fiab154
• 发表时间: 2021
• 期刊: FEMS Microbiology Ecology
• 影响因子: 4.2
• 作者: Mino, Laura;Kolp, Matthew R.;Fox, Sam;Reazin, Chris;Zeglin, Lydia;Jumpponen, Ari
• 通讯作者: Jumpponen, Ari

Persistent decadal differences in plant communities assembled under contrasting climate conditions

在对比气候条件下聚集的植物群落持续存在十年差异

• DOI: 10.1002/eap.2823
• 发表时间: 2023
• 期刊: Ecological Applications
• 影响因子: 5
• 作者: Eckhoff, Kathryn D.;Scott, Drew A.;Manning, George;Baer, Sara G.
• 通讯作者: Baer, Sara G.

Intermittent streamflow generation in a merokarst headwater catchment

微岩溶源头流域的间歇性水流生成

• DOI: 10.1039/d2va00191h
• 发表时间: 2023
• 期刊: Environmental Science: Advances
• 作者: Hatley, Camden M.;Armijo, Brooklyn;Andrews, Katherine;Anhold, Christa;Nippert, Jesse B.;Kirk, Matthew F.
• 通讯作者: Kirk, Matthew F.

Precipitation effects on nematode diversity and carbon footprint across grasslands

• DOI: 10.1111/gcb.16055
• 发表时间: 2021-12
• 期刊: Global Change Biology
• 影响因子: 11.6
• 作者: André L. C. Franco;Pingting Guan;Shuyan Cui;C. M. de Tomasel;L. Gherardi;O. Sala;D. Wall

Fire frequency, state change and hysteresis in tallgrass prairie

• DOI: 10.1111/ele.13676
• 发表时间: 2021-01-14
• 期刊: ECOLOGY LETTERS
• 影响因子: 8.8
• 作者: Collins, Scott L.;Nippert, Jesse B.;Ratajczak, Zak
• 通讯作者: Ratajczak, Zak