Collaborative research: Integrating tectonics, surface processes and paleobiodiversity using numerical and observational approaches

Mountains across the globe are biodiversity hotspots for many different groups of plants and animals; however, the deep-time relationship between mountain building and biodiversity remains elusive and requires collaboration between biologists, paleontologists, and earth scientists. This project will focus on numerical models that couple processes of mountain growth and erosion with species movement and evolution.

The project will make predictions about how mountain biodiversity is generated, maintained, and preserved over long timescales, and then use the fossil record to test and improve those predictions. To achieve multidisciplinary collaboration, project activities will include online tutorials and workshops at major scientific meetings that present the numerical modeling toolkit to a broad audience of ecologists, geologists, and biogeographers.

The toolkit is highly flexible, enabling a wide range of researchers to address complex questions spanning earth sciences and evolutionary biology. This project will support the research of three female early-career scientists at the faculty, postdoctoral, and PhD stages.

This project links a novel state-of-the-art numerical model with observational data to bridge our understanding of topography-biodiversity relationships over geologic time. By simultaneously modeling mountain uplift, the formation of climate gradients, land-surface erosion, biotic evolution and dispersal, and preservation, the model will simulate how dynamic landscapes influence biodiversity and the long-term preservation of that diversity in the fossil record.

Model predictions will be iteratively tested with modern and fossil data, focusing on the well-known record of mammals in western North America. Geological information from regional sedimentary, tectonic, and paleoclimate records will further inform and test model results. The project will establish collaborations across different disciplines and use these connections to answer long-standing questions in evolutionary biology and disseminate knowledge to a multidisciplinary audience through interactive coding workshops.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.