Award Abstract # 1237491
LTER V: New Science, Synthesis, Scholarship, and Strategic Vision for Society

NSF Org: DEB
Division Of Environmental Biology
Recipient: PRESIDENT AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE
Initial Amendment Date: December 20, 2012
Latest Amendment Date: March 15, 2019
Award Number: 1237491
Award Instrument: Continuing Grant
Program Manager: Douglas Levey
DEB  Division Of Environmental Biology
BIO  Directorate for Biological Sciences
Start Date: January 1, 2013
End Date: December 31, 2019 (Estimated)
Total Intended Award Amount: $4,899,998.00
Total Awarded Amount to Date: $5,940,356.00
Funds Obligated to Date: FY 2013 = $1,960,004.00
FY 2015 = $1,029,998.00
FY 2016 = $979,999.00
FY 2017 = $979,998.00
FY 2018 = $979,999.00
FY 2019 = $10,358.00
History of Investigator:
  • David Foster (Principal Investigator)
     drfoster@fas.harvard.edu
Recipient Sponsored Research Office: Harvard University
 1033 MASSACHUSETTS AVE STE 3
 CAMBRIDGE
 MA  US  02138-5366
(617)495-5501
Sponsor Congressional District: 05
Primary Place of Performance: Harvard Forest
 324 North Main Street
 Petersham
 MA  US  01366-9504
Primary Place of Performance
Congressional District:		 02
Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): LN53LCFJFL45
Parent UEI:
NSF Program(s): LONG TERM ECOLOGICAL RESEARCH
Primary Program Source: 01001314DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT
01001516DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT
01001617DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT
01001718DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT
01001819DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT
01001920DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT
Program Reference Code(s): 1355, 7218, 9169, 9177, 9178, 9251, EGCH, SMET
Program Element Code(s): 119500
Award Agency Code: 4900
Fund Agency Code: 4900
Assistance Listing Number(s): 47.074

ABSTRACT

The Harvard Forest LTER program is a two decade-strong, integrated research and educational program investigating forest responses to human and environmental change across the New England region. HFR engages more than 30 researchers, 200 graduate and undergraduate students, and dozens of institutions in research that incorporates social, biological, and physical sciences. Scientists conduct this work across multiple time scales: investigating the present, looking back thousands of years, and using that knowledge to calculate future change. Over the next six years, research will integrate the site's site-to-regional-scale strengths in research, education, and outreach to understand the interactive effects of climate change, biological processes, and human land-use on ecosystem dynamics, processes, and the services they provide to humans and wildlife. Researchers will pursue this question by applying long-term data from new and ongoing experiments to integrated scenarios analyses, which are a framework for scientists and decision-makers to work together to determine what factors influence present and future landscape change. These factors will then be incorporated into models to link a range of potential future scenarios, such as a future with limited oil resources, with a range of potential consequences for forest dynamics and ecosystem processes, such as an increase in forest cutting to produce heat and energy formerly produced by oil.

To broaden the impacts of its research programs, the Harvard Forest project is committed to strong education and outreach programs that engage K-12, undergraduate, and graduate students, as well as land managers, elected decision-makers, and the news media, to produce and to understand societally-relevant ecological data. This research is part of a national-scale effort led by the Harvard Forest to incorporate regional land-use scenarios at all LTER sites. The inclusion of decision-makers in the production of the results, and public outreach of those results, fills critical knowledge gaps for scientists and the public, and helps decision-makers better use science to address societally-relevant questions.

PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH

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(Showing: 1 - 10 of 240)
Abramoff, Rose Z., Eric A. Davidson, and Adrien C. Finzi. "A Parsimonious Modular Approach to Building a Mechanistic Belowground Carbon and Nitrogen Model." Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences , v.112 , 2017
Anderson-Teixeira, K.J. et al. (108 authors) "A worldwide network monitoring forests in an era of global change" Global Change Biology , v.21 , 2015
Anderson-Teixeira K. J., McGarvey J. C., Muller-Landau H. C., Park J. Y., Gonzalez-Akre E. B., Herrmann V., Bennett A. C., So C. V., Bourg N., Thompson J. R., McMahon S. M., McShea W. J. "Size-related scaling of tree form and function in a mixed-age forest." Functional Ecology , v.29 , 2015
Anderson-Teixeira, K. J., Orwig, D. A., et. al. "CTFS-ForestGEO: A worldwide network monitoring forests in an era of global change" Global Change Biology , 2014
Andrejczyk, K.; Butler, B.J.; Dickinson, B.J.; Hewes, J.H.; Markowski-Lindsay, M.; Kittredge, D.B.; Kilgore, M.A.; Snyder; S.A.; Catanzaro, P.F. "Family Forest Owners? Perceptions of Landowner Assistance Programs: A Qualitative Exploration of Behavior" Small Scale Forestry , 2016
Antonarakis, A. S., Munger, J. W., Moorcroft, P. R "Imaging spectroscopy- and lidar-derived estimates of canopy composition and structure to improve predictions of forest carbon fluxes and ecosystem dynamics" Geophysical Research Letters , v.41 , 2014 10.1002/2013gl058373
Antonarakis, A. S., P. Siqueira, and J. W. Munger "Using multi-source data from lidar, radar, imaging spectroscopy, and national forest inventories to simulate forest carbon fluxes" International Journal of Remote Sensing , v.38 , 2017
Archetti, M. Richardson, A. D., O'Keefe, J. Delpierre, N. "Predicting Climate Change Impacts on the Amount and Duration of Autumn Colors in a New England Forest" PLoS ONE , v.8 , 2013 , p.e57373 10.1371/journal.pone.0057373
Ashworth, K.; Chung, S. H.; McKinney, K. A.; Liu, Y.; Munger, B. J.; Martin, S. T.; and Steiner, A. L. "Modelling bi-directional fluxes of methanol and acetaldehyde with the FORCAsT canopy exchange model" Atmos. Chem. Phys. , 2016
Aubrecht, D.M.; Helliker, B.R.; Goulden, M.L.; Roberts, D.A.; Still, C.J.; and Richardson, A.D. "Continuous, long-term, high-frequency thermal imaging of vegetation: uncertainties and recommended best practices" Agricultural and Forest Meteorology , 2016
Baiser, B., Whitaker, N., Ellison, A. M. "Modeling foundation species in food webs" Ecosphere , v.4 , 2013 http://dx.doi.org/10.1890/ES13-00265.1
(Showing: 1 - 10 of 240)

PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT

Disclaimer

This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.

For 30 years the Harvard Forest LTER program (HFR) has conducted transformative research through the collection and synthesis of long-term observational and experimental data, impactful educational programs, and science-based public engagement that informs environmental decision-making from New England communities to the globe.  HFR research tests fundamental ecological hypotheses that advance ecological theory and answers applied questions of broad relevance, engaging >100 researchers, >200 graduate and undergraduate students, and dozens of institutions to generate synthetic, news-making publications, and regional, national (including cross-LTER), and international collaborations that help shape ecological, environmental, and conservation thinking and action.

During the last grant cycle (LTER-V), HFR's long-term observations and experiments showed that despite temperate forest's strong resilience to individual disturbance events, interactions among climate change, insect outbreaks, and chronic stresses can trigger abrupt shifts in ecosystems. New England's history of agricultural land-use, timber harvest, and hurricane events continues to shape the forest, driving sustained forest carbon uptake. Scenarios describing the future New England landscape, co-designed by ~120 diverse stakeholders and quantified in a forest landscape model, demonstrated that future land-use and climate change will shape carbon storage, forest species composition, and the provision of clean water and wildlife habitat. Syntheses of HFR research resulted in high-impact publications, six books, and policy relevant initiatives through the Wildlands and Woodlands project and the Science-Policy Exchange.

Graduate student and post-doctoral training engages early-career ecologists from many institutions. Undergraduates from traditionally under-represented groups build research experience in mentored, team-based projects at HFR. K-12 teachers involved in the Schoolyard LTER program bring authentic science projects based on HFR research to their classrooms, reaching >3000 students. Many teachers in this program receive statewide education awards for their work. The Science Policy Exchange based at HFR developed policy-relevant syntheses on clean energy, land use, and invasive insects that were shared through Congressional and agency webinars and briefings.

 


Last Modified: 12/20/2019
Modified by: David R Foster

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