URoL:EN Quantifying the phytochemical landscape through Indigenous Knowledge, interaction diversity, genomics, and network dynamics

This project seeks to understand emerging network dynamics from global to molecular scales through convergent research that spans the most recent methodological advances in biology, chemistry, mathematics, anthropology, and traditional indigenous knowledge. The proposal specifically focuses on the effects of harvesting balsa wood from Amazonian rainforests for wind-turbine production in China on forest biodiversity and indigenous communities.

The main objectives are to: 1) enhance knowledge of forest species ecological and chemical interactions through indigenous knowledge of biodiversity and medicinal plant value, 2) measure the effects of balsa-harvesting on these species interaction networks, and 3) use mathematical modeling to generalize these processes and make predictions about ecosystem resilience and sustainability. The project will be in collaboration with indigenous community members and will incorporate their traditional knowledge of plant and animal species as part of an integrated research team.

This project directly increases our understanding of the rules of life by gaining insight into the genetic, chemical and ecological mechanisms at all scales of organization that maintain biodiversity in tropical systems and predicting the subsequent effects on ecosystem resilience in a changing environment.

Quantifying how phytochemical and genetic variation are jointly structured across the landscape and contribute to the maintenance of biodiversity can contribute substantially to understanding this rule of life: the resiliency of complex ecosystems can be predicted from carefully quantified genetics, ecological interactions, and disturbances, many of which are mediated through biochemical networks. The proposal specifically focuses on the effects of harvesting balsa wood for wind-turbine production in China from Amazonian rainforests, and the research will examine the effects of forest disruptions on Kichwa and Waorani communities and on the phytochemistry and diversity associated with the tropical pepper shrub, Piper.

The proposed project will examine how these systems are linked across multiple scales, from global networks focused on producing sustainable energy, to networks of interactions with the indigenous peoples whose livelihoods and medicinal plant communities are affected by those production networks, to the ecological, chemical, and genetic networks that are the basis of species interactions with plant communities.

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.