International Planning Visit: Restoring Plant-Soil Feedbacks in Degraded Grassland in Inner Mongolia" Eviner, Valerie University of California-Davis
This proposal requests travel for the PI, Dr. Valerie Eviner, Assistant Professor in the Department of Plant Sciences at UC-Davis, to plan a collaborative study using plant-functional traits as a mechanistic tool to explore how short-term and long-term plant-soil feedbacks shape grassland conservation, restoration and susceptibility to degradation under changing conditions. The counterpart investigator is Dr. Bai, Yongfei, Associate Researcher at the Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, and director of the Inner Mongolia Grassland Ecosystem Research Station (IMGERS) located in Xilin, China. The purpose of this 14-day visit (August 14-28, 2006) is to fully explore a possible study of the ecological feedbacks linking Dr. Bai's work, which focuses on the impacts of soil resources on plant communities, with Dr. Eviner's research on the impacts of plant composition on soil structure and function.
This proposed study is ambitious and has strong potential to advance basic ecosystems science by examining actual plant-soil feedback effects, including N (Nitrogen) saturation and deposition. The planning visit is likely to be catalytic to additional research in the field to more accurately address scale and measurement problems associated with current models. The activities will inform grasslands conservation and restoration efforts, including policy, related to the effects of desertification, a topic of growing global significance.
