Postdoctoral Fellowship: CREST-PRP: Exploring the Impact of Heat-Waves and Nutrients on Bloom-Forming and Habitat-Building Seaweeds Along the South Florida Coast

博士后奖学金：CREST-PRP：探索热浪和营养物质对南佛罗里达海岸海藻形成和栖息地建设的影响

• 批准号: 2401066
• 负责人: Robert Tomasetti
• 金额: $ 33.42万
• 依托单位: Florida International University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2024
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2024-03-01 至 2026-02-28
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2401066&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Postdoctoral; Fellowship; CREST; PRP; Exploring

The CREST Postdoctoral Research Program (CREST-PRP) provides two years of support for research, training, and mentoring experiences for individual early career scientists at active CREST Centers. The goal of the CREST-PRP is to increase the STEM workforce presence of individuals who are members of groups underrepresented in STEM fields. CREST-PRP awards recognize investigators with significant potential and support their research experiences to broaden their perspectives, facilitate interdisciplinary interactions, and prepare CREST-PRP scholars for positions of leadership within the scientific community. The research project “CREST-PRP: Exploring the Impact of Heat-Waves and Nutrients on Bloom-Forming and Habitat-Building Seaweeds Along the South Florida Coast” is in direct alignment with the CREST-PRP goals. Submitted by a postdoctoral researcher affiliated with the CREST Center for Aquatic Chemistry and the Environment (CAChE) at Florida International University, the project will investigate the impact of climate change and nutrient contamination along the South Florida coast by exploring the role of heat waves and nutrients on bloom-forming and habitat-building seaweeds regionally. Seaweeds are a diverse group of primary producers that are critical to the health and prosperity of marine ecosystems. This project will be important in helping predict how this combination of stressors will increase the presence of certain seaweeds that affect the ecosystems they inhabit, like coral reefs and seagrass beds. The effects of climate change and pollution conditions on seaweeds will be studied with field and experimental approaches, thus advancing our understanding of these impacts. Additionally, this project will provide direct educational and research opportunities to Florida International University students, thus promoting Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) education amongst underrepresented students. These students will be recruited for retention into FIU graduate programs, enhancing support for successful minority students in STEM careers. Data will be made available to educate members of the public about the direct impact of changes in water quality on quality of life, ecosystem response, and the loss of coral reefs.This project will investigate the effects of heat waves and increased nutrients on bloom-forming and keystone algal species found on reefs in South Florida in an effort to understand how these changes may jeopardize the aquatic environment and affect human welfare. The stoichiometry ratios of stable carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorous (C:N:P) in multiple algal species will be analyzed in situ along an urbanization corridor adjacent to nearshore coral reefs and across all seasons. In addition, the study will attempt to detect environmental thresholds for a variety of algal species and functional groups by cultivating seaweeds in laboratory mesocosms and subjecting them to varying nutrient and temperature regimes, measuring algal photosynthetic response to simulated heat waves and determining how the metabolism of nutrients varies across nutrient and temperature gradients. Seaweeds studied will include multi-species communities of algae, and representatives from all four major seaweed clades (Bangiophyceae, Florideophyceae, Phaeophyceae, and Ulvophyceae), addressing how increasing temperature and nutrients affect broad communities of seaweeds, including those of turf algae and crustose coralline algae. Field samples will also be collected and preserved as herbarium specimens (deposited at FIU with photographic scans and metadata uploaded to the online Macroalgal Herbarium Portal), with replicate C:N:P ratios determined after varying preservation times, thus providing initial data necessary to expand surveys of historical herbarium samples. The research will expand upon prior results which showed that just 5% of macroalgal genera are responsible for 50% of global seaweed biodiversity, and that this subset of are significantly positively correlated with increasing sea surface temperatures, and thus more likely to expand during expected climate change scenarios.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.

CREST 博士后研究计划 (CREST-PRP) 为活跃的 CREST 中心的个人早期职业科学家提供两年的研究、培训和指导经验支持。CREST-PRP 的目标是增加具有以下特征的个人在 STEM 劳动力中的存在。 CREST-PRP 奖项旨在表彰具有巨大潜力的研究人员，并支持他们的研究经验，以拓宽他们的视角，促进跨学科互动，并为 CREST-PRP 学者担任科学界的领导职位做好准备。研究项目“CREST-PRP：探索热浪和营养物质对南佛罗里达海岸海藻的形成和栖息地建设的影响”与 CREST-PRP 的目标直接一致，由隶属于该项目的博士后研究员提交。佛罗里达国际大学 CREST 水生化学与环境中心 (CAChE)，该项目将通过探索热浪的作用来调查气候变化和南佛罗里达海岸营养物污染的影响海藻是一个多样化的初级生产者群体，对海洋生态系统的健康和繁荣至关重要，有助于预测这种压力因素的组合将如何增加其存在。气候变化和污染条件对海藻的影响将通过实地和实验方法进行研究，从而加深我们对这些影响的理解。将为佛罗里达国际大学的学生提供直接的教育和研究机会，从而促进代表性不足的学生的科学、技术、工程和数学 (STEM) 教育。这些学生将被招募并保留到佛罗里达国际大学的研究生课程中，从而加强对佛罗里达国际大学成功的少数族裔学生的支持。将提供数据来教育公众有关水质变化对生活质量、生态系统响应和珊瑚礁丧失的直接影响。该项目将研究热浪和营养物增加的影响。关于水华形成和关键藻类物种在南佛罗里达州的珊瑚礁上发现了这些变化，以了解这些变化如何危害水生环境并影响人类福祉。此外，该研究将尝试通过在实验室培养海藻来检测各种藻类物种和功能群的环境阈值。海藻将研究包括多物种藻类群落以及来自所有四个主要藻类的代表在内的中生态系统，并将其置于不同的营养和温度条件下，测量藻类对模拟热浪的光合作用反应，并确定营养物质代谢如何随营养和温度梯度变化。海藻分支（Bangiophyceae、Florideophyceae、Phaeophyceae 和 Ulvophyceae），解决温度和营养物质增加如何影响广泛的海藻群落海藻，包括草皮藻和甲壳珊瑚藻的样品也将被收集并保存为植物标本（将照片扫描和元数据上传到在线巨藻植物标本门户网站保存在佛罗里达国际大学），并确定重复的 C:N:P 比率。不同的保存时间，从而为扩大历史植物标本馆样本的调查提供必要的初始数据。该研究将扩展先前的结果，该结果显示只有 5% 的大型藻属。负责全球海藻生物多样性的 50%，并且该子集与海面温度升高呈显着正相关，因此在预期的气候变化情景下更有可能扩大。该奖项是 NSF 的法定使命，并被认为值得通过以下方式获得支持：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。