NSF Award
2017860
Soils contain a large amount of the Earth's carbon. The rate at which this carbon gets released as carbon dioxide (CO2) depends on a number of factors, including changes in soil microbial activity and environmental characteristics. Measuring the rates of CO2 emission from the soil to the atmosphere is an essential component needed to model and understand global environmental change. The NSF-supported National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) makes continuous measurements of all the required components to determine soil carbon flux (the balance between the rate of carbon buildup vs. discharge as CO2) at a given site. The researchers in this project will compute soil flux at each of the twenty core NEON sites across the continental U.S. and cross-reference them with other existing databases. The researchers will also recruit five faculty at primarily undergraduate institutions (PUIs) for a faculty training cohort in a suite of instruction, peer mentorship, and educator development activities. This cohort will result in greater engagement of faculty and undergraduate students with existing NEON data and ecology research. In collaboration with the recruited faculty, the researchers will develop a series of education modules in biology that is estimated to impact several hundred undergraduate students annually. The faculty cohort will also engage in professional development focused on broadening participation among diverse undergraduate students and researchers.<br/><br/>NEON infrastructure includes soil sensor arrays that record all the necessary components for calculating continuous soil CO2 flux. The delivery of computed soil CO2 flux values as a higher-level data product is a widely-sought application of NEON data. This project will fill this data gap by developing and field-validating a freely available R package to easily and rapidly calculate soil CO2 flux at any core terrestrial NEON site. The researchers will validate the results through direct measurements, ground-truthing the measurements against existing soil respiration databases, and apply the soil flux data product in modeling and data assimilation to parameterize soil biogeochemical models at a focal core NEON site. During the third year of this project, the researchers will recruit five faculty from primarily undergraduate institutions (PUIs) to engage in a faculty mentoring cohort. Participating faculty will: (1) join together in a mentoring cohort to refine and pilot education modules in macrosystems environmental science for undergraduate students, thus building networks of practice in the teaching of macrosystems ecology; (2) contribute to the validation of the soil CO2 flux data product, thus building their technical skills in instrumentation, data analysis, and facility with NEON sites and data products; and (3) develop their intercultural competency skills, increasing their ability to mentor undergraduate researchers from underrepresented backgrounds, thus working towards diversifying environmental science and its STEM workforce.<br/><br/>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.
