OpportunityTitle: Are threatened high-elevation spruce-fir forest impacted by aluminum toxicity and calcium loss?
AdditionalInformationOnEligibility: This is a &quot;Notice of Intent&quot; of a single source task agreement award to the University of Missouri, Columbia, MO under the Great Rivers Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit (CESU). The cooperator for this project was chosen because of the unique ability to conduct this research.  The PI&apos;s research program has the overarching goal of identifying and quantifying key ecological processes and interactions that define ecological sustainability.  The PI examines how resource availability (e.g., light, water, nutrients, carbon) and disturbances (e.g., management interventions, fire, exotic invasions) influence ecosystem structure and function in agroforests, natural forest, and plantation forests.  In addition, the PI worked closely with researchers on the first phase of this project from inception to implementation.
Description: The Cooperator will examine how aluminum toxicity, calcium availability, and nitrogen saturation vary with modeled deposition, topography, and edaphic characteristics and how these factors influence the distribution of plant species. This supplemental implementation plan for year 3 describes how we will use lysimeters to correlate soil chemistry data, collected in year 1 and 2 of the project, to soil solution chemistry. This will allow the results of this project to be more useful in assessing the ecological thresholds of critical load models. The project specifically addresses the following objectives: 1. Determine the variability of soil solution chemistry across spruce-fir forests 2.Determine the relationship between bulk soil chemistry and soil solution chemistry 3. Determine if a non-lysimeter method of collecting soil solution samples is applicable to spruce-fir forests of the southern Appalachians
GrantorContactEmailDescription: Help Desk
GrantorContactText: Tonya Bradley &lt;br/&gt;Contract Specialist &lt;br/&gt;Phone 402-661-1656