Collaborative Research: Continent-wide forest recruitment change: the interactions between climate, habitat, and consumers

合作研究：全大陆森林补充变化：气候、栖息地和消费者之间的相互作用

• 批准号: 2211764
• 负责人: James Clark
• 金额: $ 65.48万
• 依托单位: Duke University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2022-09-01 至 2026-08-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2211764&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Continent; wide; forest

The sustainability of North American forests depends on seed production by trees as well as seedlings that must establish for the next generation of trees. For most of North America, neither the amounts of seed that are produced, nor how much of that seed survives to become adult trees is known. Population spread beyond current frontiers will be governed by seed production of trees (fecundity), germination, and seedling survival—the capacity of trees to produce seed and disperse it to the habitats where populations can survive in the future. Planning for environmental change impacts requires this knowledge to anticipate tree species migrations and its impacts on the birds and mammals that depend on forests for habitat and food. Understanding these forest recruitment responses requires a methodological shift from the current method of monitoring of seeds, seedlings, and consumers on small plots to extensive sampling methods that can be implemented at biogeographic scales. This study combines continental scale tree fecundity estimates with a new generation of monitoring and synthesis methods for integrating tree fecundity, seedling success, and its impacts on animal consumers. This research will quantify current trends across the continent, the changes in forests that are happening now, and the habitat changes that are causing them. Development of a biogeographic network of tree fecundity and recruitment will provide the monitoring platform needed for science and management of future forests. Broader impacts will focus on stakeholder integration, including conservation and management planning, information transfer to stakeholders in federal and state agencies, and citizen science outreach. Products of the study will have immediate application to forest regeneration practices in the coming decades. Agency and NGO stakeholders will advise and disseminate products of the study. New analytical tools will identify where tree recruitment is limited in North America, its rate of change, and what’s causing it. The project focuses on three recruitment stages, seed supply (seed mass per tree abundance), seedling establishment (seedlings per seed mass), and recruitment rate (advanced regeneration per seedling). Each recruitment stage will be linked to climate and habitat variables and to the vertebrate consumers of seeds, fruits, and nuts. Extensive gradient sampling (EGS) is a new approach to estimate the key demographic rates that are relevant at the scale of habitats or plant communities, while combining it with traditional data already available from the meter-scale intensive monitoring sampling (IMS). The project will include data collection based on this new approach, (EGS) of fecundity, tree recruitment, and vertebrates distributed across climate and habitats. Predictive vertebrate modeling (PVM) of activity based on camera traps (snapshot USA, NEON, and this study), live trapping (NEON sites) and bird point counts (BBS, NEON, and eBird) across North America will be conducted by the research team. By understanding tree recruitment and the vertebrates that depend on them, this study will i) identify the species that are limited by recruitment, including the habitats and stages where limitation occurs, ii) quantify the relationship with vertebrate activity, and iii) evaluate predictive distributions of change that account for climate-vertebrate interactions fitted to data. Quantifying tree fecundity and animal-consumer relationships at biogeographic scales will provide a foundation for the next generation of efforts to understand food web implications of environmental change.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.

北美森林的可持续性取决于树木的种子生产以及必须为下一代树木建立的幼苗。对于北美的大多数地区来说，要么生产的种子数量，要么有多少种子幸存下来成为成年树木。人口蔓延在当前边境之外的传播将由树木的种子生产（繁殖力），发芽和幼苗生存 - 树木生产种子并将其散布到人群将来可以生存的栖息地的能力。对环境变化的影响计划需要这种知识预测树种的迁移及其对依赖森林栖息地和食物的鸟类和哺乳动物的影响。了解这些森林招募的反应需要从当前监测种子，幼苗和消费者在小地块上的方法到可以在生物地理尺度上实施的广泛抽样方法的方法论转变。这项研究结合了连续规模的树木繁殖力估计与新一代的监测和合成方法，用于整合树木繁殖力，播种成功及其对动物消费者的影响。这项研究将量化整个持续的当前趋势，现在正在发生的森林变化以及造成它们的栖息地变化。开发一个生物地理网络的繁殖力和招聘网络将为未来森林的科学和管理所需的监视平台提供。更广泛的影响将集中在利益相关者的融合上，包括保护和管理计划，信息转移到联邦和州机构的利益相关者以及公民科学宣传。该研究的产品将在未来几十年中立即应用于森林再生实践。代理商和非政府组织利益相关者将为研究的产品提供建议和传播。新的分析工具将确定北美树木招募的何处，其变化速度以及导致它的原因。该项目侧重于三个招募阶段，种子供应（每棵树丰度），幼苗建立（每种子质量幼苗）和招募率（每苗条​​的高级再生）。每个招聘阶段都将与气候和栖息地变量以及种子，水果和坚果的脊椎动物消费者有关。广泛的梯度抽样（例如）是一种新的方法，可以估算栖息地或植物群落规模相关的关键人口统计学率，同时将其与已经从仪表尺度密集型监测采样（IMS）获得的传统数据相结合。该项目将根据这种新方法（例如）的繁殖力，树木招募和分布在气候和栖息地的脊椎动物的数据收集。研究团队将根据研究团队进行基于相机陷阱（快照美国，霓虹灯和这项研究），实时捕获（NEON位点）和北美鸟点计数（BBS，NEON和EBIRD）的预测性脊椎动物建模（PVM）。通过了解树木的招募和依赖它们的脊椎动物，这项研究将i）确定受招聘受到限制的物种，包括发生限制的栖息地和阶段，ii）量化与脊椎动物活性的关系； iii）评估对气候相互作用的变化的预测分布。在生物地理量表上量化树木的繁殖力和动物消费者的关系将为下一代努力理解环境变化的含义的努力为基础。该奖项反映了NSF的法定任务，并被认为是通过基金会的知识分子优点和更广泛的影响来评估来获得的支持。