Restricted Research - Award List, Note/Discussion Page
Fiscal Year: 2023
75 University of North Texas (141963)
Principal Investigator: Ponette,Alexandra Gisela
Total Amount of Contract, Award, or Gift (Annual before 2011): $ 651,159
Exceeds $250,000 (Is it flagged?): Yes
Start and End Dates: 8/1/22 - 7/31/27
Restricted Research: YES
Academic Discipline: Geography
Department, Center, School, or Institute: College of Lib Arts & Soc Sci
Title of Contract, Award, or Gift: Collaborative Research: MRA: Particulates in canopy flowpaths: A missing mass flux at the macrosystem scale?
Name of Granting or Contracting Agency/Entity:
National Science Foundation
CFDA Link: NSF
47.074
Program Title:
none
CFDA Linked: Biological Sciences
Note:
For 40% of the North American continent and 1/3 of global land surface, rain contacting/being partitioned by forests is the first atmosphere-biosphere interaction in the rain-to-runoff pathway. As a result, the canopy-atmosphere interactions governing how rain is partitioned into the “hydrologic highways” of throughfall (TF, water dripping through gaps/from surfaces) and stemflow (SF, water that runs down stems) affects the quantity/quality of water available to humans & ecosystem processes across scales, including microscale patterns of fine root and soil microbial community structure/function, mesoscale stream discharge/chemistry, and continental-to-global variability in evapotranspiration. Canopy-rainfall interactions reduce system water inputs by 20-50%, can supply >100 kg of dissolved solutes ha-1 year-1 to soils, and affect global and regional mean temperatures by up to 2 C. Despite this importance, no work has coordinated a continental Macrosystem effort to measure, scale & predict the particulates traffic riding these hydrologic highways to the surface. Ignoring these highways and their particulate traffic introduces error in water & nutrient flux models at the first point where terrestrial biogeochemistry and hydrological cycles entwine (which may cascade those errors through all downgradient processes). Therefore, we seek to extend current Macrosystem biological understanding to include TF and SF particulate concentrations, fluxes and composition, specifically addressing 3 major objectives: (1) Estimate the net rainfall (TF+SF) water and particulate mass flux across forest types; (2) Characterize the particulate composition (C:N:P, including C components, like total C, organic C, black C, and microplastic C) of TF and SF; and (3) Identify major drivers of macrosystem variability in net rainfall particulate flux and composition.
Discussion: No discussion notes