抖阴旅行射

For more than 40 years, scientists from 抖阴旅行射 Boulder and institutions around the country have braved thin air and often frigid weather to collect samples and data from above 9,500 feet on 抖阴旅行射 Boulder鈥檚 highest campus. The goal: to better understand high-alpine ecosystems in a warming world.

Thanks to a new $7.65 million, six-year grant from the , that work will continue, making the Niwot Ridge Long Term Ecological Research Project (LTER) the longest-running NSF-funded program at 抖阴旅行射 Boulder.

鈥淲e鈥檙e incredibly lucky to be able to study a fairly intact alpine ecosystem so close to Boulder in the Front Range,鈥� said Nancy Emery, lead Principal听Investigator (PI) of the project and associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology. 鈥淏y having different scientists focusing on the same location, it helps us understand the ecosystem from all perspectives and how it ticks.鈥澨�

The research has already yielded a rare, uninterrupted record of more than four decades of data on the ecology and biogeochemistry of high-elevation ecosystems, which are especially vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. That data also reveals that Niwot Ridge鈥檚 hottest temperatures each year have increased almost 1 degree Fahrenheit (about .5 degree Celsius) each decade since 1980.

The next research question on the agenda: How will the plants and animals living here respond to future warming, and how fast?

The funding for the next six years will support a variety of ongoing projects in ecology, biology, chemistry and engineering, but a central, collaborative focus will be on one that examines how pieces of this high-alpine ecosystem adapt to climate change. Up on the ridge, researchers will cut out pieces of earth like giant brownies, transplant them to lower, slightly warmer elevations, and track how the turfs鈥� plants and microbes, and the soil, respond.

鈥淭here's a lot of interest right now in trying to understand and predict how quickly things are responding to a warmer world,鈥� said Emery. 鈥淲hat we're really interested in is: What's responding to warming? And what determines how fast things respond to warming?鈥�

The Niwot Ridge LTER operates out of the 抖阴旅行射 Boulder Mountain Research station, a 102-year-old extension of the 抖阴旅行射 Boulder campus 26 miles west of Boulder, for which the LTER program supports a majority of the research. It is one of the original six NSF-funded long-term ecological research sites founded in 1980, one of only three that have been continuously funded since then, and the only mountain-based (and the highest elevation) site out of 28 sites across the country. It is also responsible for the third-longest record of atmospheric carbon dioxide in the world, and the longest in the continental U.S.听

It鈥檚 an impressive, ongoing legacy: In the past six years alone, the program has led to the publication of more than 170 scientific papers and trained over 100 抖阴旅行射 Boulder students. Since its inception in 1980, over one thousand papers on the science of high-elevation ecosystems have been published as a result of research funded by the program. 听

For one recent project, researchers hauled thousands of pounds of black sand to the ridge to simulate the not-so-distant future effects of a warming planet on alpine ecosystems. For another, they set up a sensor network array comprised of 16 small towers, to collect extremely detailed data on everything from how water moves throughout the landscape, to plant community composition and soil temperature. 听

鈥淭he sensor network array is an impressive set of instrumentation that's collecting data that's unprecedented, especially in high-elevation landscapes. It gives us a lot of insight into how plants are responding to very subtle differences in this landscape,鈥� said Emery.

This ongoing research by the Niwot Ridge LTER also informs the management of beloved sites like Rocky Mountain National Park to the north, as well as important local resources like Boulder鈥檚 watershed. 听

The Niwot Ridge LTER鈥檚 Education and Outreach work will continue to provide opportunities for the professional development of graduate students and researchers to communicate their science to public audiences. A new direction for the project going forward includes using art to communicate data and the impacts of climate change on the alpine environment, including a with local Casey Middle School students.听

Emery will lead the project鈥檚 next six years, along with 抖阴旅行射 Boulder Co-Principal Investigators Katharine Suding, Eve-Lyn Hinckley, Scott Taylor (director of the Mountain Research Station), and William Wieder, project scientist at NCAR. They will be joined by 抖阴旅行射 Boulder faculty in the departments of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology; Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering; Geography; the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR); and Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES); as well as faculty from Colorado State University, University of Wyoming, Tulane, Chico State University and UC Riverside.听

For Emery, an evolutionary ecologist and a plant ecologist, this ability to work with colleagues across disciplines and institutions鈥攆rom climate and snow scientists to microbiologists鈥攁t a site right in Boulder鈥檚 backyard, is an unrivaled research opportunity.听

鈥淲ith all of these experts who find common ground at Niwot Ridge, I can understand the impacts of environmental and climate change on alpine plants in a way that I otherwise couldn't,鈥� said Emery. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 really special.鈥澨�