NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship in Biology FY 2021: Integrating megafauna community reassembly with ecosystem carbon cycling

Forbes, Elizabeth S, Santa Barbara CA

Investigators

Abstract

This action funds an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology for FY 2021, Integrative Research Investigating the Rules of Life Governing Interactions Between Genomes, Environment and Phenotypes. The fellowship supports research and training of the Fellow that will contribute to the area of Rules of Life in innovative ways. Climate change (mediated by accelerated carbon emissions) and wildlife community reassembly (mediated by unprecedented rates of species introduction and loss) are environmental calling cards of our modern era. However, the connection between changes to wildlife communities and changes in the carbon cycle is rarely drawn, despite growing recognition that wildlife may control carbon exchange between ecosystems and the atmosphere. This project will demonstrate how management of wildlife can mediate uptake and storage of carbon in a boreal forest ecosystem, potentially offering a nature-based climate solution, and more accurately account for sources and fates of carbon in the system’s carbon budget. The Fellow will train the next generation of scientists (high school, undergraduate and graduate) from diverse backgrounds by integrating wildlife conservation with ecosystem science using field and laboratory methods, data science, and carbon modeling. This project quantifies impacts of moose populations on carbon cycling in the boreal forest of Newfoundland, Canada. Boreal forests are a sink for atmospheric carbon, but Newfoundland’s forest’s capacity as a carbon sink may be threatened by rising populations of introduced moose and their foraging impacts on forest biomass and soil biogeochemistry. The study will systematically examine how variation in moose population abundances links to changes to forest carbon storage and emissions across a landscape-scale moose density gradient. The Fellow will quantify carbon stored aboveground in tree biomass, carbon stored in soil, and the soil carbon emissions in relation to local moose abundance and local biophysical features of the landscape. These three aspects of carbon cycling will be measured with drone imagery, soil sampling and carbon analyses in the laboratory, and custom carbon-emissions detecting sensors, respectively. The data will holistically describe moose impacts on carbon storage and emissions. These insights will be used to develop a model relating moose density and landscape features to carbon cycling across Newfoundland to provide a spatial decision-support tool for landscape management to enhance ecosystem carbon uptake and storage. The Fellow will receive training in soil and climate science, landscape ecology, and data science as well as providing outreach to students on these topics through multiple online and in-person venues. 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.