Collaborative Research: MRA: Do structural and functional diversity drive ecosystem-climate coupling? Using NEON to transform ecological model paradigms across climate scales.

University Corporation For Atmospheric Res, Boulder CO

Investigators

Abstract

Ecological climate, or the air space from the tops of trees to the ground, is the climate that organisms experience. It can provide habitat that is buffered from temperature and humidity extremes. Ecological climate is, however, not represented in climate models, leaving a gap in scientific understanding of how plants and animals in forests will fare in a changing climate and in how forest management might influence climate change. This project will answer key questions about how the structure of forest canopies influences ecological climate, using data from the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON), and providing information about whether complex forest canopies can provide a buffer from climate extremes. Forests as natural climate solutions are currently being marketed for investment without a full understanding of climate impacts of forest management. The products produced by this project will address this knowledge gap, provide new materials for educators, and grow a more informed ecological modeling community. Observations of forest canopies available from NEON provide an unprecedented opportunity to parameterize and evaluate cutting edge forest canopy models. The overarching hypothesis driving this project is that forest functional and structural diversity modulate ecological climate through their influence on vertical profiles of canopy fluxes, and that these are further regulated by forest demography and climate feedbacks from local to macrosystem scales. To test this hypothesis, the project integrates site-level and remote sensing observational data from NEON into recently developed versions of the Community Land Model (CLM). Using a latitudinal transect of NEON sites in Eastern US forests, from Florida to New Hampshire, researchers will (1) evaluate the influence of forest structure and function on ecosystem fluxes at local and short-term scales across a latitudinal gradient, then (2) consider change over longer time scales by coupling this canopy model to a demographic model, and, finally, (3) assess how forest structure and function influence regional climate by connecting these local-scale results to an atmospheric model. Upon completion, this project will transform our understanding of the role that forest structure and function play in regulating ecological climate across space and time. 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.