International Research Fellows Award: Extending the DIRT (Detritus Input and Removal Treatments) Study to Sikfokut Forest, Hungary

Vanderbilt, Kristin L, Corvallis OR

Investigators

Abstract

0076182 Vanderbilt The International Research Fellow Awards Program enables U.S. scientists and engineers to conduct three to twenty-four months of research abroad. The program's awards provide opportunities for joint research, and the use of unique or complementary facilities, expertise and experimental conditions abroad. This award will provide Dr. Kristin L. Vanderbilt with support for her to work with Dr. Janos Toth at the Kossuth Lajos University in Debrecen, Hungary during four field seasons. A better understanding of the environmental controls on soil nitrogen and carbon cycling is needed to improve predictions of forest nutrient availability under different management scenarios, changes in global carbon budgets due to climate change, and forest response. To address these questions, long-term manipulative plant litter experiments (referred to as the DIRT ( (Detritus Input and Removal Treatments)) experiments) have been established at a network of sites in the U.S. The objective of this research project is to establish and sample long-term litter manipulation experimental plots at Sikfokut Forest in Hungary like those already installed at several U.S. locations. This site differs greatly from the sites in the U.S. in terms of management history. Dr. Vanderbilt will conduct baseline measurements of soil and soil solution carbon and nitrogen chemistry, and compare results with data from U.S. sites. She will establish protocols for plot maintenance and sampling, and work with graduate students in ecology at Kossuth Lajos University to develop research projects using the litter manipulation plots. Besides promoting and furthering collaboration between researchers in the U.S. and Hungary, this project will help realize the potential of cross-site research between Long Term Ecological Research and International Long Term Ecological Research sites to provide spatially extensive information about how different ecosystems respond to the same treatments. Dr. Toth has spearheaded the nutrient cycling and litter decomposition studies at Sikfokut. ***