RCN: DRAGNet - Disturbance and Recovery Across Grasslands

University Of Minnesota-Twin Cities, Minneapolis MN

Investigators

Abstract

Physical disturbances (like plowing or animal wallowing) and increased supply of nutrients (like nitrogen and phosphorus) are changing Earth's terrestrial environments. However, predicting how plants and soils will respond remains uncertain. The project, DRAGNet (Disturbance and Recovery Across Grasslands Network), aims to address this by coalescing over 120 scientists from 93 grassland sites across Asia, Africa, Australia, Europe, North America, and South America. All scientists will conduct identical soil disturbance and nutrient addition experiments to understand how and where grassland communities respond to repeated disturbances and increased nutrients, how grasslands will recover from disturbance, and why similar places exhibit different responses to these changes. DRAGNet requires relatively low investment of time and money from individual researchers, enabling contributions from ecologists globally. The findings from DRAGNet will be shared through publications, educational materials, and public talks. Coordination of this collaborative, global research network will provide deeper understanding of how ecosystems respond to disturbances and changes caused by human activities across the globe to better protect and preserve, both, wild and human-occupied environments. As a research coordination network, DRAGNet will allow comparisons of community responses in different grassland environments by coordinating identically replicated, factorial experiments manipulating soil disturbance and elemental nutrient supply at sites around the world. The data on plant and soil responses, collected following identical methods, will support tests of hypotheses about vegetation and biogeochemical resistance, the tendency to remain unchanged when disturbed, and recovery, the speed of return to a pre-disturbance state. By coordinating replicated experiments across site conditions, DRAGNet data will also uniquely clarify the context-dependence of post-disturbance responses on site history and conditions. In addition to testing hypotheses arising from ecological theory, project data will support development of a framework for understanding herbaceous system responses to these environmental changes by comparing recovery trajectories among diverse site conditions. The network will have four in-person and four virtual meetings to bring contributors together to analyze data, test hypotheses, and advance theoretical frameworks. In concert with scientific advances, the DRAGNet collaboration, especially the meetings, will serve to advance research and facilitate collaboration and knowledge-sharing in the global scientific community. 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.