Rain Lemieux
Pronouns: he/him
Research Mentor(s): Liting Zheng
Research Mentor School/College/Department: Institute for Global Change and Biology / SNRE
Program:
Authors: Rain Lemieux, Michael Catrambone
Session: Session 5: 2:40 pm – 3:30 pm
Poster: 55
Abstract
As the climate warms, CO2 levels and nitrogen deposition are increasing, posing significant danger to the biodiversity of grassland ecosystems. Understanding how plant species biodiversity will change in the future is an important tool in the fight against climate change and in helping us understand humanity’s impact on our world. This study specifically examines the effects of elevated levels of CO2 and nitrogen on different perennial grassland plant species’ trait variation. This was done through BioCON, which is an experiment at the University of Minnesota that aims to study the effects of rising CO2, nitrogen, and decreasing biodiversity on plant communities on a global scale. The sixteen plant species’ leaf samples were collected from plots that were exposed to either ambient CO2 levels or +180 ppm through Free Atmospheric CO2 Enrichment technology, and either ambient nitrogen levels or +4g m-2·y-1 through ammonium nitrate pellets. We compared the changes of different plant species’ functional traits under ambient and exposed conditions of CO2 and nitrogen to see how they either reinforce or weaken each other. Additionally, we compared how the plants adapted both in monocultures versus diverse environments. This research will contribute to questions of how our world will look as we gain more insight into which plants can adapt to the raised levels of CO2 and nitrogen, and which plants will suffer and risk extinction.
