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Harvard Forest REU Symposium Abstract 2018
- Title: Land Use and Disturbance History at NEON-LTER Sites
- Author: Kyra E Hoerr (Bryn Mawr College)
- Abstract:
Disturbance and anthropogenic land-use generate a legacy that influences ecosystem structure and function for decades or longer. Therefore, it is crucial to understand the history of regions we study in order to contextualize the ecological patterns we observe today. This project reconstructs land use and disturbance history by utilizing data from two existing networks: the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) and the Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) network. The NEON collects standardized measurements from field sites across the U.S. representing various ecosystem types. The LTER supports 28 sites across the U.S. that have been collecting data for up to 38 years to study long-term ecological change. Cross NEON-LTER sites offer an opportunity to analyze standardized, cross-continental organismal patterns by examining differences in long-term land use within and across NEON-LTER sites. This study examined how land use and disturbance history vary within and across three sites and how these differences impact organismal patterns observed at these sites. Organismal data from NEON (including mammal, bird, and plant richness) and land use data from LTER were gathered and analyzed using a generalized linear model. This study found dramatic differences in disturbance frequency, intensity, and type across sites as well as differences in disturbance history within a given site. This study is meant to demonstrate the importance of considering past land use and disturbance when understanding and predicting broad ecological patterns.
- Research Category: Biodiversity Studies; Ecological Informatics and Modelling; Historical and Retrospective Studies
