Grasslands and savannas (i.e., grassy habitats) account for ~40% of the global land surface and ~30% of terrestrial productivity. Three evolutionary lineages within the grass family (Poaceae) dominate grassy systems globally. Because many functional traits (morphological and physiological) are passed down within lineages, can these evolutionary lineages help us better understand ecological function in grasslands?
As part of a collaborative NSF-funded project we have collected a large suite of grass functional traits and hyperspectral reflectance across the Great Plains at select NEON and LTER sites to answer questions about the evolution of trait coordination, how hyperspectral measurements can help us scale from leaf traits to landscape-level ecosystem function, and how grassy biomes will respond to climate change.
Funding: National Science Foundation (#1926108) Macrosystems Biology.
Rangelands cover approximately 50% of the state of California and 90% of them are on private lands. In addition to providing forage for livestock, rangelands provide habitat for biodiversity and can store a considerable amount of carbon. Because most of California’s rangelands are dominated by non-native annual grasses, increasing native perennial grass cover is an ecological goal as well as a range management goal to support forage productivity. New work at Gabilan Ranch, a working cattle ranch and a Nature Conservancy conservation easement, will map and investigate the relationship between cattle grazing and vegetation composition. Key questions are how differences in grazing intensity across the site affect native grass cover, and how the effect of grazing interacts with interannual climatic variability.
Tropical forests are hotspots of biodiversity. They have year-round growing seasons and are commonly thought of as evergreen, but leaves are replaced at different rates for different species. Thus, tropical forest canopies can be highly dynamic representing complex structural and functional diversity. With funding from NSF we are integrating ground-based measures of leaf phenology and leaf turnover with UAV hyperspectral, thermal, and lidar observations at two contrasting sites on the Island of Hawaiʻi – Lāupahoehoe and Pālamanui – to better understand species- and site-specific canopy dynamics and associated productivity. Results thus far have shown differences in species’ crown temperatures associated with crown architecture and leaf traits, the relative effects of which will vary with seasonal changes in phenology and leaf area.
Funding: National Science Foundation (#2026264) Geography and Spatial Sciences.
Department of Geography
University of California
508 McCone Hall
Berkeley, CA 94720-4740
Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management
University of California, Berkeley
25 Hilgard
Berkeley, CA 94720-3114
