Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit, Piedmont South Atlantic CESU

archived

The National Wetlands Research Center of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) is offering a funding opportunity to a partner of the Piedmont-South Atlantic Cooperative Ecosystems Studies Unit (CESU) Program. The goal of this project is to promote continued cooperation between the USGS and a Piedmont-South Atlantic University in order to support carbon sequestration and land use change research in pocosin wetlands of the Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge. This project will provide an ecosystem services analyses designed to learn more about the influences of management activities on reducing or enhancing realized ecosystem services benefits on refuge lands. Analyses will require a number of field studies to support assessments. Field scientists from the USGS will be responsible for coordinating the timing and objectives for major study pulses, including soil sampling and core dating, installation and re-measurement of surface elevation monitoring equipment, and collection and analysis of greenhouse gas flux data (CO2, CH4, N2O). The recipient institution will be responsible for assisting with forest structural surveys and/or stem mapping (if feasible) for assessing standing carbon and nitrogen stocks (Year 1), for calculating standing biomass from plots from available allometric equations (Year 1 and 2), for compiling relevant ecological literature (Years 1 and 2), and for assisting USGS scientists with analysis and writing (Years 2 and 3). Coordinated field surveys of standing forest biomass will not only be needed to support plot-level studies, but also to verify remote sensing methods (esp. Lidar) being proposed to assess the same variables but over much larger spatial scales not feasible with plot-level sampling.

High