Conference: Forest biodiversity response to changing climate across the Americas: Synthesis of long-term ecological data

George Mason University, Fairfax VA

Investigators

Abstract

Forest communities are changing rapidly. It has been difficult to determine if those changes are due to climate change or other factors like habitat destruction. Many studies follow forest community change over short periods of time, making it difficult to identify drivers of change. Long-term research, often spanning decades at specific locations, provides local information about species, individuals and environmental conditions. This workshop brings together ecologists, data managers, and statisticians to harmonize data from long-term research sites in forest ecosystems. Sites include those from the Long-Term Ecological Research network, United States Forest Service experimental forests, the National Ecological Observation Network, and National Park Service biodiversity monitoring sites. The goals is to assess the long-term effects of climate change on forest communities across the Americas that have not been impacted by habitat loss. The data sets generated during the workshop are made available through the Environmental Data Initiative. This workshop also provides ongoing professional development for all participants. The inter-disciplinary nature of the workshop fosters collaborations to alleviate barriers for scaling the information from individual long-term ecological research sites to the macrosystem scale. Such barriers still limit the scale and scope of ecological research. The two-day workshop harmonizes data sets from different locations as well as spatial and temporal scales to investigate the effects of climate change on biodiversity in forest ecosystems across the Americas. The resulting synthesis research paper describes how forest biodiversity has changed over the past ~ 40 years and the role of climate in driving those changes. This workshop brings together experts in the fields of ecology, data management, statistics and climate change. Results include a strong research network of ecologists that study a broad range of taxonomic groups focused on understanding the long-term changes in forest ecosystems both at local and continental scales. 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.