Long-term Ecological Research (LTER)
Location:
Coweeta, North Carolina
Current Graduate Students:
John Kominoski (PhD), John Frisch (PhD)
Previous Graduate Students:
Kate Schofield (PhD), Susan Dye (MS),
Natalie Powell (MS)
Pending Proposal (2009-2015): Southern Appalachia on the Edge - Exurbanization & Climate Interaction in the Southeast
Summary:
Multi-scale process-oriented research is proposed on the consequences
to the southern Appalachian socio-ecological system of the interaction
between changing climate and land use. Landscapes in the southeastern
U.S. are expected to change profoundly in the next five decades as the
socioeconomic factors driving the dramatic exurbanization of the past
three decades persist, and the changes to the rates, frequencies, and
intensities of important climatic factors occur. Climate and land use
change will especially impact the rural and quasi-rural lands that
still characterize much of southern Appalachia where this research is
centered.
The proposed research will extend long-term measurements, field experiments and interdisciplinary modeling from small watershed studies to regional-scale analyses so as to account for increases in resource demand and competition from adjacent and more distant areas. The research focus will be on the provisioning service of water quantity, the regulating service of water quality, and the supporting service of maintaining biodiversity. The overarching question that guides this research is: How will key ecosystem processes and the focal ecosystem services of water quantity, water quality, and biodiversity be impacted by the: (1) Transition in land uses from wildland to urban and peri-urban; (2) Changes in climate; and (3) Interactions between changes in land use and climate including both on-site and off-site feedbacks?
Intellectual Merit: These are unprecedented times and the environmental challenges faced by society demand novel approaches to the production, dissemination and application of knowledge to protect essential ecosystem services and meet human needs. Traditional experiments provide limited understanding of the complex interactions between exurbanization and climate change prevalent at regional scales, while correlation-based models omit the relevant processes about which much is already known. At a regional scale, assimilation of sparse observational and experimental data from multiple scales becomes the overwhelming challenge, and process-based models are the best option for meeting this challenge. The sampling, experimental manipulations and modeling proposed in this research are designed to capture interactions within a range of distinct landscapes reflecting the flowpaths, habitats, and human communities characteristic of southern Appalachia. It does this by working across a range of scales from coarse to fine consisting of (1) regional basins, (2) sub-basins, (3) headwater catchments, and (4) hillslopes and riparian zones.
Broader Impacts: Although the most consequential effects of climate and land use change will appear on the rural and quasi-rural lands of southern Appalachia, scientific effort to date has largely concentrated on the urban and wildland end-members of this transformational gradient. This limits understanding of the complex interactions between climate change and exurbanization that is vital to the near-term and long-term quality of life within the region. It also circumscribes the capacity to continue providing the ecosystem services of water quantity, water quality, and biodiversity within and beyond southern Appalachia. The results from this research will be of considerable interest to policy makers, planners, and regulators in southern Appalachia and the Piedmont Megapolitan Region as they struggle to maintain the properties of place that make the region both a 'water tower' to the Southeast and one of the most biodiverse temperate regions in the U.S. if not the world.
Long-term Research Summary: The Coweeta LTER Research Program has evolved since 1980 from a site-based to a site and region-based project which examines the effects of disturbance and environmental gradients on biogeochemical cycling (To learn more about the evolution of Coweeta research through time, please visit "Evolution of Research at Coweeta"). By studying watershed ecosystem processes which regulate and respond to the biogeochemical cycling effects, we are able to unravel the impact humans have on varied environmental conditions and provide solid science to guide future land use planning.
Current
Research (2002-2008):The current
interdisciplinary research integrates ecological and socioeconomic
components across 54,000 km2 of the southern Appalachian Mountains, a
bio-geophysical and socioeconomic region in which evolutionary and
historical processes converge (Whittaker 1956, Markusen 1987, Barnes
1991, Kretzschmar et al. 1993, Bailey 1996). Our research objective in
2002-2008 is to advance scientific understanding of the spatial,
temporal, and decision-making components of land use and land-use
change in the southern Appalachian Mountains over the last 200 years,
and forecast patterns into the future 30 years. Research is organized
into three initiatives:
(1) Characterization of the
Socio-Natural Template
(2) Ecosystem Responses to the
Socio-Natural Template
(3) Forecasting Ecosystem
Responses to Changes in the Socio-Natural Template
Representative
Publications:
Kominoski, J.S., C.M. Pringle, B. A.
Ball, M. A. Bradford, D. C. Coleman, D. B.
Hall and M. D.
Hunter. 2007. Non-additive effects of leaf litter
species diversity
on breakdown
dynamics in a detritus-based stream. Ecology 83:
1167-1176.
Schofield, K., C. M. Pringle, and J. L. Meyer.
2004. Effects of increased bedload on
algal-and
detrital-based stream food webs: experimental manipulation of sediment
and macaroconsumers.
Limnology and Oceanography 49: 900-909.
Hunter, M. D., S. Adl, C. M. Pringle and D. C. Coleman. 2003.
Relative effects
of macroarthropods
and habitat on the chemistry of litter during
decomposition.
Pedobiologia
47:101-115.
Schofield, K. A., C. M. Pringle, J. L. Meyer, and A. B.
Sutherland. 2001. The
importance of
crayfish in the breakdown of rhododendron leaf litter. Freshwater
Biology 46:
1191-1204.
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