Collaborative Research: Biomass burning smoke as a driver of multi-scale microbial teleconnections

合作研究：生物质燃烧烟雾作为多尺度微生物遥相关的驱动因素

• 批准号: 2039545
• 负责人: Brent Christner
• 金额: $ 7.18万
• 依托单位: University of Florida
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2021-04-01 至 2024-03-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2039545&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Biomass; burning; smoke

Microbes are found in all environments and play essential roles in nutrient cycling, gas exchange, and through associations with plants and animals. However, the ways that microbes are transported from one environment to another are not well understood. Each year, wildland fires emit millions of tons of smoke particles into the atmosphere and these particles likely carry microbes with them. Traditionally, wildfires have been studied in terms of direct impacts to terrestrial biota and the chemistry and physics of the atmosphere, but the role of smoke as an agent of biological dispersal has yet to be explored. Grasslands are one of the most widespread and frequently burned ecosystems, so this research will examine the impacts of smoke-driven microbial dispersal in tallgrass prairies of the central United States using unmanned aerial vehicles flying into smoke plumes, combustion experiments and soil incubations that mimic conditions in nature. This project uses an integrated approach to better understand the consequences of smoke to human, plant, and animal health across all environments where wildland fire occurs. The increasing size and severity of global wildfires, leading to increased interaction between biomass burning smoke and human populations, make this research relevant to a wide range of stakeholders including those interested in the potential transport of pathogenic microbes. In addition to mentoring three post-doctoral scholars, a graduate student, and undergraduate summer interns, the results will be disseminated to local communities through existing K-12 and informal learning programs at the Konza Prairie LTER and NEON sites. Microbial emissions in smoke from biomass burning are both quantitatively and qualitatively different from the bioaerosols observed from wind-driven emissions, implying that wildland fire may be a globally relevant and yet-unquantified mechanism for microbial teleconnections among ecosystems. To test how smoke drives microbial metacommunity ecology, this project will use an integrated approach that compares the composition and viability of smoke source and sink microbial assemblages in field- and laboratory-based experiments. Smoke and particulate deposition during repeated prescribed fires in grasslands will be sampled over two years to characterize the relationships among fire behavior, meteorological conditions, and survival of microbes transported in smoke. Sterilized and untreated soils from similar, unburned sites will be exposed to contrasting dosages of smoke with known microbial content to compare the relative influence of selection, dispersal, and drift on soil microbial community assembly. These data will be used to build new capacity for simulating smoke microbial dispersal across scales by parameterizing microbial emission fluxes and microbial dispersion in atmospheric, chemical transport, and coupled fire-atmosphere models. Results will lend insight into the relative importance of stochastic vs. deterministic processes in driving microbial community ecology in systems where fire disturbances are frequent, while modeling will enable predictions of the scale and impact of smoke-related microbial dispersal. This research will inform questions about microbial gene flow, microbial pathogen epidemiology, phytopathogens, and meteorological processes, and will expand fundamental understanding of fire’s ecological significance.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.

在所有环境中都发现了微生物，并通过与动植物的关联在营养循环，气体交换中起着重要作用。但是，微生物从一个环境转移到另一种环境的方式尚不清楚。每年，荒野都会发射数百万吨的烟颗粒进入大气，这些颗粒可能带有微生物。传统上，野火一直是对陆地生物群的直接影响以及大气的化学和物理学的直接影响，但是烟作为生物分散剂的作用尚未探索。草原是最广泛，经常被燃烧的生态系统之一，因此该研究将使用无人驾驶飞机飞往烟雾羽流，混合型实验和土壤孵化，模仿自然界中的烟雾羽流和土壤孵化。该项目采用综合方法来更好地了解野生大火发生的所有环境中烟雾对人，植物和动物健康的后果。全球野火的规模和严重程度的增加，导致生物质燃烧的烟雾与人类种群之间的相互作用增加，这使得这项研究与广泛的利益相关者有关，包括那些对致病微生物潜在运输感兴趣的利益相关者。除了为三名博士后学者（研究生和本科暑期实习生）进行脑力外，结果还将通过现有的K-12和非正式学习计划在Konza Prairie lter和Neon Sites中传播给当地社区。生物量燃烧的烟雾中的微生物排放既与风向排放中观察到的生物溶质溶质均具有数量和质量上的不同，这意味着生态系统之间的微生物可能是全球相关且尚未获得的微生物远程连接机制。为了测试烟雾如何驱动微生物元社区生态学，该项目将使用一种综合方法来比较基于现场和实验室实验中烟雾源和下沉微生物组合的组成和生存能力。两年来，将在草原上反复处方大火期间进行烟雾和特定沉积，以表征火灾行为，气象条件以及在烟雾中运输的微生物的生存之间的关系。来自类似，未燃烧的地点的无菌和未经处理的土壤将暴露于与已知微生物含量的烟雾对比剂量，以比较选择，分散和钻对土壤微生物社区组装的相对影响。这些数据将用于建立新的能力，以通过在大气，化学转运和耦合的火自动层模型中参数化微生物发射通量和微生物分散来模拟跨尺度的烟雾微生物分散。结果将涉及随机性与确定性过程在驱动微生物社区生态学中的相对重要性，而火灾灾害经常发生的系统，而建模将可以预测与烟有关的微生物分散体的规模和影响。这项研究将为有关微生物基因流，病原体流行病学，植物病和气象过程的问题提供信息，并将扩展对火对火的生态意义的基本理解。该奖项反映了NSF的法定任务，并通过使用该基金会的智力功能和广泛的影响来评估NSF的法定任务。