The Biology Integration Institute Initiative was designed by the National Science Foundation “to bring researchers together around the common goal of understanding how the processes that sustain life and enable biological innovation operate and interact within and across different scales of organization, from molecules to cells, tissues to organisms, species, ecosystems, biomes and the entire Earth. The Biology Integration Institutes (BII) program supports collaborative teams of researchers investigating questions that span multiple disciplines within and beyond biology.”
The Center for Tree Science (CTS) at The Morton Arboretum is a hub for independent and innovative research centered on trees and the role they play in globally diverse environments. As part of Science and Conservation at the Arboretum, CTS’s goals are to: 1) conduct and communicate research addressing the key challenges facing trees; 2) build and motivate collaborative scientific communities and shared research resources; and 3) inspire and enable leaders through an integrated mentorship program. In September 2020, we were awarded funding from the National Science Foundation to design a BII with the intent of submitting a Full Implementation proposal in January 2022.
The following list contains the goals for the TREETIME project development stage as a whole, however, our May research workshop is predominantly focused on the first goal.
Clarify our core question, identify opportunities for synergy in existing projects, and design new cross-disciplinary, collaborative research projects.
Create a management plan for collaborations and define specifications for an integrative database that addresses data management and data sharing.
Enhance our integrated mentorship program.
Specific additional goals for the TREETIME project (if funded) will be developed in advance of and during the workshop to ensure research and additional activities meet the group vision and outcomes important to participants.
-Main Theme: Terrestrial Responses to Emerging Environments through Time, Integrated from Moments to Eons (TREETIME)
-Nodes:
Evolutionary adaptation to environmental variability and change among individuals, populations, species, and clades
Temporal cues and mechanisms for tradeoffs in resource usage, limitation, and provisioning
Timing and change in organismal interactions and ecosystem feedbacks
These themes are starting points, but will be refined and modified by the collaborative teams.
We are seeking diverse perspectives and individuals who complement and extend our existing expertise and resources at The Morton Arboretum and help bring in cross-cutting, interdisciplinary ideas. We are looking for collaborators who contribute in three key areas: 1) fill gaps in our current expertise, including but limited to cellular/molecular biology, ecophysiology, and remote sensing; 2) create inclusive opportunities for graduate student mentorship; and 3) connect us with key analytical or experimental capabilities, including existing NSF facilities (see point 9).
For our initial research workshop, we have already selected our workshop participants to actively shape the direction of the BII proposal and research directions. However, there will be needs and opportunities for additional individuals who are interested in participating in a more limited or focused manner (e.g. lab work, sharing data, etc.) and we will continue to engage with potential collaborators that fill an identified gap.
For the overall BII project, we expect to generate publications, white papers, tools, conservation activities, etc. However, we do not expect any formal deliverables from the workshop (i.e. white paper, tools, etc.). Our goals for the workshop are to accomplish the following:
Finalize major themes and identify sub-themes within each.
Clarify the scope and constraints on our proposed work (e.g. thematic, organismal, geographic constraints).
Identify teams to design projects that address overarching goals/hypotheses.
Identify our “core group values” and draft “rules of collaboration” moving forward.
Throughout the process, we will be relying heavily on asynchronous, online activities as well as small group engagement to help build team cohesion around the TREETIME vision and research scope. The workshop in May will also be completely virtual. We are working with a professional facilitation group, Divergent Science LLC, who has expertise in helping different groups, including scientists, maximize their effectiveness and impact through the science of team science. More details will be provided to TREETIME participants in the spring.
Graduate Students -- We want to welcome graduate students and will keep them on our email list, but if space becomes limited in our workshop, graduate students (particularly early-stage) will likely be lower priority because of the long-term uncertainty of their positions.
International -- We welcome researchers from around the globe to interact and participate in the development of the BII. In the event of future BII-related meetings, there may also be opportunities to support travel activities within the US. However, we are unable at this time to provide financial support to students and researchers at their home institutions or for travel that originates outside the US because of NSF regulations. We are willing to work with international participants to support proposals or grant submissions that support TREETIME-related research activities in their home countries. We anticipate creating an expert advisory board that could certainly include international scientists.
Absolutely, we are considering these and other opportunities (including those listed as well as FIA data, US NPN, ForestGEO) and are working to leverage existing networks of sites such as pre-existing common gardens, ArbNet, and others. However, the final use of these different networks, each with its own strengths and weaknesses, will depend on the specific hypotheses to decide to test and the projects that will be used to test them.
We are currently open to many topics that evaluate the temporal dynamics and feedbacks of organisms, especially trees, in the many environments in which they exist, including the wildland to urban spectrum. Although the exact topics focused on will ultimately be decided by the expertise and priorities of the full TREETIME collaborative team, we envision studying both the causes and consequences of seasonal and temporal dynamics through both “fundamental” and “applied” science approaches.