This award will initiate a Long-Term Ecological Research project at Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest, New Hampshire. The overall goal of the research is a better understanding of the response of northern hardwood-conifer watersheds to large-scale disturbance, particularly with regard to (i) vegetation structure, composition and productivity; (ii) dynamics of dead organic matter; (iii) atmosphere-terrestrial-aquatic linkages; and (iv) heterotroph population dynamics. The research will be carried out on sites with contrasting disturbance history using experimental, survey, and long-term monitoring studies. It will provide valuable information on long-term ecosystem responses to disturbance, information needed by society to assess the effects of management and policy on the integrity of forest ecosystems. Specifically, the research will examine (1) vegetation processes including neighborhood competition and gap-phase succession at different stages of development, and biomass and nutrient accumulation in the early stages of succession; (2) organic matter processing in streams and soils, decomposition of bole wood, and the formation and disruption of organic debris dams; (3) biogeochemical processes including wet and dry deposition, stream outflow, hydrologic modeling and hillslope hydrology, and construction of internal ionic budgets; and (4) population dynamics of breeding birds, phytophagous insects and a pathogenic fungus, and the nutritional ecology of whitetailed deer. The multi-investigator, multi-institutional research team assembled for this project will bring to bear a truly formidable array of expertise and accumulative record of past productivity. The team combines the abilities of both older and younger scientists to great advantage. Facilities at the Hubbard Brook site are excellent for the project and will be augmented by significant resources available at the cooperating institutions. The USDA/Forest Service will continue to play a key role as steward for the site, collaborator in the science, and provider of large amounts of project support in kind. This is genuinely a multi-talented effort. The Program recommends that the first year of funding be awarded for this five-year continuing project.
