Collaborative Research: Incorporating secondary foundation species in coastal restoration efforts to increase ecosystem regrowth, biodiversity recovery and climate resistance

合作研究：将次要基础物种纳入沿海恢复工作，以促进生态系统再生、生物多样性恢复和气候抵抗力

• 批准号: 2301960
• 负责人: Brian Silliman
• 金额: $ 25.54万
• 依托单位: Duke University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2023-05-01 至 2026-04-30
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2301960&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Incorporating; secondary; foundation

Ecological restoration is an important tool to combat habitat degradation, biodiversity loss, and climate change. However, ecological restoration is extremely challenging. It requires building partnerships across researchers, conservationists, and managers to co-develop, test, and refine new science-informed solutions that will improve restoration success, lower costs, and increase efficiency. Restoration in coastal systems has historically taken a single-species approach that focuses on reducing environmental stress, avoiding competition, and excluding interactions with other organisms. Previous work by the investigators is challenging this paradigm and has demonstrated that beneficial interactions among and across species are key to organismal and ecosystem resistance to the high physical stress that is common in restoration. Harnessing mutually beneficial, or positive species interactions has the potential to increase restoration yields at little or no extra cost. This project unites non-profit restoration practitioners with scientists to test and systematically incorporate mutually beneficial interactions in large-scale restoration to increase habitat growth, resistance to environmental stress, and re-establish biodiversity. This work will occur in three invaluable coastal ecosystems that have severely declined due to anthropogenic activities and therefore are the target of extensive conservation efforts – oyster reefs, salt marshes, and seagrass meadows. Results of this work will inform restoration strategies and be integrated into easy to understand training materials (e.g. step-by-step guides and workshops) that will be distributed to interested stakeholders. This work will support and train a number of conservation scientists across the research institutions and other organizations, and provide hands-on training and demonstrative case-studies of new and easy to implement restoration techniques. Foundation species, such as salt marsh grass, seagrasses, and oysters, are habitat-forming organisms that create locally stable conditions for other organisms. Secondary foundation species (SFS) are habitat-forming organisms that establish after and within a primary foundation species (PFS) that further modify and enhance ecosystem functions and structure. Inclusion of facilitation between co-occurring primary and secondary foundation species in restoration designs has the potential to increase ecosystem regrowth as well as elevate biodiversity of inhabitants and climate resistance. The overarching objective of the proposed research is to work in concert with conservation organizations to test and co-design evidence-based approaches that restore secondary foundation species to increase the growth of primary foundation species and site biodiversity, while enhancing key ecosystem functions (e.g., climate resistance of restored habitats). Specifically, this project will: 1) Test how enhancing previously restored sites with either complementary or similar SFS at both low and high abundances affects PFS growth, local biodiversity, and key ecosystem functions, 2) Co-restore PFS with either complementary or similar SFS at both low and high abundances in a fully-factorial experiment to test for the relative ability to increase PFS growth, local biodiversity, and important ecosystem functions in newly restored systems, and 3) Survey previously restored habitats and reference sites to quantify and correlate SFS abundance and complementarity with changes in PFS abundance, local biodiversity and ecosystem function to test the generality of SFS effects.This project is being supported via a joint program involving the Divisions of Environmental Biology and Integrative Organismal Systems and the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation.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.

生态恢复是打击栖息地退化，生物多样性丧失和气候变化的重要工具。但是，生态恢复极为挑战。它要求在研究人员，保护主义者和经理之间建立伙伴关系，以共同开发，测试和完善新科学知识的解决方案，以提高恢复成功，降低成本并提高效率。从历史上看，沿海系统中的恢复是一种单物种方法，该方法着重于减轻环境压力，避免竞争并排除与其他组织的互动。研究人员的先前工作正在挑战这种范式，并证明物种之间和跨物种之间的有益相互作用是对恢复中常见的高物质压力的有机和生态系统抵抗的关键。利用互惠互利或阳性物种相互作用有可能以很少或没有额外的成本增加恢复产量。该项目将非营利性恢复从业人员与科学家分配，以在大规模恢复中进行测试并系统地融合互惠互利的相互作用，以增加栖息地的生长，对环境压力的抵抗力以及重新建立生物多样性。这项工作将发生在三个宝贵的沿海生态系统中，这些生态系统由于人为活动而严重下降，因此是广泛的保护工作的目标 - 牡蛎礁，盐沼和海草草地。这项工作的结果将为恢复策略提供信息，并将其纳入易于理解的培训材料（例如，分步指南和讲习班），将分发给感兴趣的利益相关者。这项工作将支持并培训整个研究机构和其他组织的许多保护科学家，并提供新颖易于实施的恢复技术的动手培训和示范性案例研究。盐沼草，海草和牡蛎等粉底物种是为栖息地的生物而生成局部稳定条件的生物。次要基础物种（SFS）是在主要基础物种（PFS）中建立的栖息地形成生物，它们进一步修改并增强了生态系统的功能和结构。在恢复设计中共同出现的原发性和次要基础物种之间包括设施，有可能提高生态系统改革，并提高影响力和气候抗性的生物多样性。拟议的研究的总体目标是与会议组织协同工作，以测试和共同设计基于证据的方法，以恢复次要基础物种，以增加主要基金会物种和现场生物多样性的增长，同时增强关键生态系统功能（例如，恢复生态植物的气候抵抗力）。 Specifically, this project will: 1) Test how enhancing previously restored sites with either completery or similar SFS at both low and high abundances affects PFS growth, local biodiversity, and key ecosystem functions, 2) Co-restore PFS with either complete-factorial experiment to test for the relative ability to increase PFS growth, local biodiversity, and important ecosystem functions in newly restored systems, and 3) Survey previously restored habitats and参考站点以量化和相关的SFS抽象和互补性与PFS抽象的变化，本地生物多样性和生态系统的变化来测试SFS效应的一般性。基金会的智力优点和更广泛的影响评论标准。