Collaborative Proposal: MRA: Local- to continental-scale drivers of biodiversity across the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON)

合作提案：MRA：国家生态观测站网络 (NEON) 区域到大陆范围的生物多样性驱动因素

• 批准号: 2301322
• 负责人: Sydne Record
• 金额: $ 36.83万
• 依托单位: University of Maine
• 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: 2022-10-15 至 2024-11-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2301322&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Proposal; MRA; Local; continental

Understanding how natural and human-made factors affect geographic patterns of biodiversity is essential for planning conservation efforts, especially in the face of rapid global changes. Geographic patterns of biodiversity are expected to be influenced by a combination of local biological factors, like competition among species, and by regional to continental physical factors, such as climate. However, this expectation has not been evaluated from local to continental scales across diverse species lineages. In addition, natural and human-made disturbances are likely to alter this expectation. This study uses the geographic design of the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) across the USA to test this idea, by quantifying multiple biological and physical factors affecting biodiversity patterns of small mammals, fish, and ground beetles at nested spatial scales. The study will add new, publicly available data to NEON including measures of animal body sizes, species diversity, and geospatial layers for disturbance and land use histories, climate, geology, and topography. Teaching modules will highlight data science skills needed to work with NEON data. Undergraduates, graduate students, and postdocs will engage directly with the research. The study will also engage the public and increase awareness of the biosphere and environmental change with an interactive exhibit for Science on a Sphere developed with computer science students, a natural history museum, and a large science festival.The proposed research will advance the field of ecology by connecting fine-grained measurements of individual organism traits, like body size, to cross-scale drivers of biodiversity from plot to continental scales. This research develops a conceptual framework that describes relationships among intraspecific trait variation (ITV) in body size, biodiversity, and drivers related to disturbance, past land use, and their interactions. This framework will advance basic theory and prediction of spatial biodiversity patterns by linking ITV to drivers of biodiversity across scales. Three main questions include: (1) How does spatial scale influence body size ITV and its relationship with biodiversity across taxa within NEON? (2) How is disturbance regime explained by different scales of climate, geodiversity and land cover, and past land use across NEON? (3) How do relationships among climate, geodiversity and land cover, past land use, disturbance regime, and body size ITV explain variation in biodiversity across taxa from local to continental scales? The proposed research will meet a major research need within NEON, to quantify disturbance and land use history data from the plot to the domain scale. Such data are essential to interpretation of observational ecological data and will be publicly disseminated as a geospatial and tabular database containing code for linking other NEON plot, site, and domain data products. These new data and biodiversity analyses will serve to establish a baseline for future spatiotemporal NEON data products that concern ecological communities and ITV.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.

了解自然和人为因素如何影响生物多样性的地理格局对于规划保护工作至关重要，特别是在面对快速的全球变化时。生物多样性的地理格局预计会受到当地生物因素（例如物种之间的竞争）和区域到大陆物理因素（例如气候）的综合影响。然而，这种期望尚未在不同物种谱系的地方到大陆尺度上进行评估。此外，自然和人为干扰可能会改变这种期望。本研究利用美国国家生态观测站网络 (NEON) 的地理设计来测试这一想法，通过量化在嵌套空间尺度上影响小型哺乳动物、鱼类和地面甲虫生物多样性模式的多种生物和物理因素。该研究将为 NEON 添加新的、公开的数据，包括动物体型大小、物种多样性以及干扰和土地利用历史、气候、地质和地形的地理空间层的测量。教学模块将重点介绍使用 NEON 数据所需的数据科学技能。本科生、研究生和博士后将直接参与研究。该研究还将通过由计算机科学专业的学生开发的“科学球体”互动展览、自然历史博物馆和大型科学节来吸引公众，提高对生物圈和环境变化的认识。拟议的研究将推动生物圈和环境变化领域的发展。通过将个体生物体特征（如体型）的细粒度测量与从地块到大陆尺度的生物多样性的跨尺度驱动因素联系起来。这项研究开发了一个概念框架，描述体型、生物多样性以及与干扰、过去土地利用及其相互作用相关的驱动因素之间的种内性状变异（ITV）之间的关系。该框架将通过将 ITV 与跨尺度的生物多样性驱动因素联系起来，推进空间生物多样性模式的基本理论和预测。三个主要问题包括：（1）空间尺度如何影响个体大小 ITV 及其与 NEON 内跨类群生物多样性的关系？ (2) 不同尺度的气候、地理多样性和土地覆盖以及 NEON 过去的土地利用如何解释干扰机制？ (3) 气候、地理多样性和土地覆盖、过去的土地利用、干扰机制和个体大小 ITV 之间的关系如何解释从地方到大陆尺度的跨类群生物多样性的变化？拟议的研究将满足 NEON 内的主要研究需求，以量化从地块到域尺度的干扰和土地利用历史数据。此类数据对于解释观测生态数据至关重要，并将作为地理空间和表格数据库公开传播，其中包含用于链接其他 NEON 绘图、站点和域数据产品的代码。这些新数据和生物多样性分析将为未来涉及生态社区和 ITV 的时空 NEON 数据产品建立基线。该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。