Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit, Southern Appalachian Mountians CESU

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The US Geological Survey, Fort Collins Science Center, is offering a funding opportunity to conduct research that analyzes the response of tree species and forest types across the US to N deposition, emphasizing the consequences for biodiversity, climate, and C sequestration. Data sets will be gathered, evaluated, and then synthesized to produce a spatially representative assessment of the relationships between plant-available soil chemistry and plant response. Specific tasks include assembling data on soil solution, soil exchange chemistry, and plant responses for field plots in the US and Canada to determine if there are thresholds that can be related to detrimental plant physiological responses. A data base of these records will be developed, and then further used to scale up analysis to the continental US using FIA (Forest Inventory Analysis) data. Using hierarchical Bayesian analyses, data will be analyzed for tree growth and survival as a function of N deposition, species, tree growth stage, soil type and climate.

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