Dear colleagues, For those attend the Ecological Society of America Annual Meeting in Portland, OR, I would like to invite you to attend Ignite session #6 "Trait-Based Methods for Representing Change in Belowground Ecosystems". The session will bring together the observational/experimental and modeling communities to discuss covariation in root, rhizosphere and microbial traits and how these characteristics can be included in modeling approaches. Trait-enabled approaches are expected to improve our understanding of how climate and vegetation interact to define the past, current and future distribution of vegetation, and feedbacks to climate.
Session: IGN 6 Session Title: Trait-Based Methods for Representing Change in Belowground Ecosystems Link to Session: https://eco.confex.com/eco/2017/webprogram/Session13060.html Date/Time: Tuesday, August 8, 2017, 8:00-9:30 am Location: C124 Oregon Convention Center Session Description: Field ecologists and ecosystem modelers face a foundational challenge to simplify structural and functional attributes of belowground terrestrial ecosystems while accurately capturing the diversity observed in nature. An exciting field of research - trait-enabled modeling - is being forged at the intersection of plant ecology and ecosystem modeling, where both communities are seeking to understand and harness covariation among plant and microbial traits. Belowground ecological traits, both structural and functional, are those that define species in terms of their ecological roles and how those species interact with the environment and with other organisms in a community. In this Ignite session we will bring together these two communities, and their respective challenges, and discuss a vision for how belowground traits, more specifically root, rhizosphere, and microbial traits, can facilitate new ways of understanding plant dynamics and ecology. Armed with this knowledge, one can implement trait-enabled approaches to modeling ecosystem function, which allows communities to be assembled based on how microbes, plants, and soils with unique trait combinations perform under a given set of environmental conditions, thus improving our predictive capabilities. We anticipate that pursuing trait covariation and trait-enabled modeling in an Ignite session will provide opportunities for fruitful collaboration between field ecologists and ecosystem modelers as thus advancing this new and evolving capability. Such collaboration will ultimately improve our understanding of how climate and vegetation interact to define the past, current and future distribution of vegetation, and feedbacks to climate. We look forward to meeting everyone, Dan Stover (U.S. Department of Energy), Stan Wullschleger (Oak Ridge National Laboratory), Colleen Iversen (Oak Ridge National Laboratory) Presenters: Stan Wullschleger (Oak Ridge National Laboratory) "Outcomes of the New Phytologist trait covariation workshop" Steven Allison (University of California, Irvine) "Overcoming Challenges in Trait-Based Global Modeling" Qing Zhu (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory) "Interfacing Plant and Soil in Earth System Models: Missing Components and Implications" Colleen Iversen (Oak Ridge National Laboratory) "Harnessing a Galaxy of Root Traits to Address Belowground Challenges in Plant Ecology" M. Luke McCormack (University of Minnesota) "Revisiting Old Assumptions and Developing Paradigms Informed by Robust data and Trait-Based Perspectives" Christopher Blackwood (Kent State University) "Root trait Diversity: A Key to Soil Carbon Stabilization, But Can it be Simplified for Terrestrial Ecosystem Models" Stephanie Kivlin (University of New Mexico) "Predictive Promise and Pitfalls of Incorporating Mycorrhizal fungal Traits into Earth System Models" Nicholas Bouskill (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory) "Improved Understanding of the Subsurface Nitrogen Cycle Using Trait-Based Microbial Modeling" __________________________________________ Daniel B. Stover, PhD Program Manager, Terrestrial Ecosystem Sciences Climate and Environmental Sciences Division Office of Biological and Environmental Research SC-23.1 / Germantown Building U.S. Department of Energy 1000 Independence Avenue, SW Washington, D.C. 20585 tel. 301-903-0289 fax. 301-903-8519 email: [email protected] http://science.energy.gov/ber/research/cesd/ http://tes.science.energy.gov/ BER advances world-class biological and environmental research programs and scientific facilities for DOE missions in energy, environment, and basic research.
