| NSF Org: |
DEB Division Of Environmental Biology |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | August 16, 2018 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | June 6, 2023 |
| Award Number: | 1802880 |
| Award Instrument: | Standard Grant |
| Program Manager: |
Matthew Kane
mkane@nsf.gov (703)292-7186 DEB Division Of Environmental Biology BIO Directorate for Biological Sciences |
| Start Date: | August 15, 2018 |
| End Date: | July 31, 2024 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $875,624.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $964,474.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
FY 2020 = $18,700.00 FY 2023 = $70,150.00 |
| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
201 PRESIDENTS CIR SALT LAKE CITY UT US 84112-9049 (801)581-6903 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
115 S 1460 E Salt Lake City UT US 84112-8930 |
| Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
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| Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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| Parent UEI: |
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| NSF Program(s): | MacroSysBIO & NEON-Enabled Sci |
| Primary Program Source: |
01001819DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT 01002021DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT |
| Program Reference Code(s): |
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| Program Element Code(s): |
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| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.074 |
ABSTRACT
Water is a critical resource that sustains continental ecosystems. Land plants play a critical role in the cycling of water between the continents and atmosphere by extracting water from soils and groundwater and releasing it to the atmosphere as they grow. Existing data suggest that this process, transpiration, accounts for more than half of the global transfer of water from the continents to the atmosphere. Surprisingly little is known about how much water is transpired, how different types of plants and ecosystems govern transpiration, and how properties of ecosystems are shaped by transpiration. This award supports an interdisciplinary group of ecologists, Earth and atmospheric scientists, and engineers to make estimates of plant transpiration across the United States for the first time and use these data to develop models and improve predictions of future plant water use. The team will develop new techniques and datasets benefitting the scientific community and conduct interdisciplinary graduate student training to prepare diverse, next-generation scientists to tackle ecological and data science challenges.
The project team will work with a wide range of data products produced by the National Ecological Observatory Network, with a primary emphasis on stable isotope ratios of water vapor and carbon dioxide. Isotope ratios provide an integrated measure of physical processes controlling gas exchange between plant leaves and the atmosphere. The suite of sensors deployed by the Network across the USA provides the first standardized dataset enabling isotope-based estimation of transpiration across a diverse range of continental ecosystems. The project team will develop new calibration procedures and data products from the Network's sensor data and distribute these for use by the broader research community. These data will be integrated with other data collected by the Network and information from field campaigns by the project team, using analysis at a range of spatial scales from individual plots to continental scales to determine how ecosystem structure and plant regulation of gas exchange control transpiration. This knowledge will be integrated into and used to test models for plant water use that reflect the underlying distribution of functional traits and structural properties within the study ecosystem. The models will be used to examine the potential sensitivities of transpiration and ecosystem water use. During the course of its work, the project will develop and disseminate new measurement and data analysis approaches and datasets of broad use to researchers, and will support a graduate short course in spatial sciences.
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.
PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH
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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.
Transpiration, the transfer of water from the land surface to the atmosphere by plants, is a fundamental process in plant growth and a major flux in the terrestrial water cycle. Our understanding of the controls and limits on transpiration, and ability to model this process, is limited. Our project used new data documenting the stable isotope chemistry of water in rainfall, soils, plants and atmospheric vapor to quantify sources and rates of transpiration by plants in different ecosystems across the USA.
The Intellectual Merit of our project included the development of new methods for collecting, processing, and using stable isotope data in the study of transpiration, as well as practical and fundamental findings about the factors that control plant water use and its representation in water cycle models. These results advance our understanding of how plants will respond to factors such as climate change and drought and improve our ability to model future changes in ecosystems and water resources.
The Broader impacts of our project include new, openly shared resources that will advance transpiration research in the future and extensive, multifaceted training of next-generation scientists. The project developed major new datasets, data products, and software that support the use of isotopes in water research. These products have been shared in public-access repositories to facilitate future reuse and application. The project has trained two postdocs, three PhD students, six undergraduates, and two secondary school teachers who have contributed to various components of the research. In addition, the project has supported and enhanced a long-running interdisciplinary summer training course for graduate students and postdocs (the SPATIAL summer course), which has provided isotope ecohydrology and data science training and mentoring that has advanced the career development of >100 junior researchers during this grant’s lifetime.
Last Modified: 01/10/2025
Modified by: Gabriel J Bowen
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