The research projects that will utilize the funded instrumentation address questions related to plant fitness and environmental/ecosystem stress. The first project studies the biochemistry and physiology of plants responding to adverse environments. Plants undergoing environmental stress (high light, drought, salinity, heat, cold, disease, insect herbivory, etc?) almost invariably show changes in cellular biochemistry. The instrumentation will allow detailed, quantitative measurements of these changes, both in the field and laboratory. The second area of research is in collaboration with the US Park Service on invasive plants in Shenandoah National Park. The requested instruments will facilitate the expansion of a long term ecological study of invasive plant impacts on native wetland species from mapping and quantifying plant population dynamics and spread to also include detailed study of the physiology of both native and invasive plants.
These varied research projects are related in their shared need for the equipment requested, and in the overarching goals of gaining deeper understanding into how environmental change alters plant adaptive fitness to a particular geographical area. The instruments will also significantly and positively impact our evolving research atmosphere at Eastern Mennonite University, in which we are striving to integrate research and education across the biological and chemical sciences, in collaboration with research partners at other universities and with scientists working in the public sector (e.g. in Shenandoah National Park).
