Ecosystem Science

NSF BIO supports investigations of ecosystem structure and function across spatial and temporal (including paleo) scales to advance understanding of 1) material and energy fluxes and transformations within and among ecosystems; 2) roles and relationships of ecosystem components in whole-system structure and function; 3) ecosystem dynamics, resilience, and trajectories of ecosystem change; and 4) macrosystem biological processes, including interactions at regional to continental scales.

Research is supported in a variety of biome types, including terrestrial, freshwater, wetland/coastal, and human-dominated environments. Proposals may focus on areas such as biogeochemical cycling and elemental budgets; primary and secondary productivity; roles of species in ecosystem functioning; stoichiometric relationships; energy and gas fluxes; and landscape dynamics. Proposals may also address the cycling of non-nutrient elements, but those that focus on ecotoxicology, or lack a clear link to ecosystem processes, will not be considered. Ecosystem-oriented proposals with pelagic marine, deep ocean, or Laurentian Great Lakes study sites should be submitted to the Directorate for Geosciences. Proposals that span other disciplines are welcome and may be co-reviewed at the discretion of NSF.

Projects may be based on data reuse and synthesis, modeling, observational studies, and/or manipulative experiments and they may take place in field, mesocosm, computational, and laboratory settings. Use of NEON and LTER data and resources are encouraged. Proposals, whether hypothesis- or discovery-driven, should have a strong theoretical or conceptual foundation. Projects that aim to develop new techniques can be supported, but only when there is clear potential for a major advance in ecosystem science.