CAREER: Quantifying how and when global change alters the role of biodiversity in ecosystem functioning

University Of Colorado At Boulder, Boulder CO

Investigators

Abstract

Humans are driving global environmental change that is altering biodiversity with the potential to transform the ecosystem functions that support human well-being. To address the grand challenges of global environmental change, scientists and practitioners need a causal understanding – or robust evidence of cause-and-effect relationships – of how and when global change impacts ecosystems. In response, this CAREER proposal will develop an integrated research and education platform to transform understanding of global change impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem functioning and to train the next generation of global change scientists. To facilitate these advances, the project will study how chronic drought impacts biodiversity and ecosystem functioning of grassland ecosystems in the southwest/central US because of their importance to the global carbon cycle and current projections of intensifying drought in this region. Then, the research will broaden insights to other ecosystems (e.g., to study warming impacts on alpine tundra), through cultivating inclusive, collaborative teams to tackle focal research questions with NSF Long Term Ecological Research and NEON data. This research’s broader impacts focus on training the next generation of scientists to enhance their methodological toolbox and ability to lead inclusive teams that promote diverse perspectives. To achieve these goals, the researcher will lead a distributed graduate seminar with training in inclusive team science; create innovative, open-source course modules on data science; and catalyze professional development for K12 teachers. This CAREER proposal seeks to transform the methods used to acquire causal understanding and to generate new causal understanding about the mechanisms through which drought and warming will alter biodiversity and, in turn, ecosystem functioning. This project proposes a novel integration of existing NSF data, new experimental tests, and recent, multidisciplinary advances in causal inference techniques that are currently underutilized in ecology. This convergent approach will generate quantitative estimates of: (1) why and how biodiversity change dampens or amplifies the impacts of drought on ecosystem productivity, and whether the mechanisms through which biodiversity affects productivity (2) differ for soil functions and (3) vary with a site’s climate history and plant functional traits. Through a distributed graduate seminar, the project will include teams of graduate students to synthesize (4) how these direct and indirect effects of global change vary across drivers (e.g., warming, nitrogen pollution) and ecosystems. This integrated approach will deliver insights on the mechanisms through which global change alters the effect of biodiversity on productivity and generate broader advances in the causal inference in ecology. To deliver broader impacts, the researcher will lead a distributed graduate seminar that provides a vehicle to advance the use of best practices for inclusive team science and work with pedagogy experts and graduate students to create and evaluate data science modules. To extend benefits to K12 classrooms and low-income communities in Colorado, the project will work with CU Boulder’s Science Discovery’s Teacher Professional development program to collaborate with teachers to integrate concepts of global change and data literacy into their classes, potentially reaching thousands of students. 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.