EPSCoR Research Fellows: NSF: Detecting Early Warning Signals of Dryland Ecosystem Change Using Experimental Precipitation Manipulations and Drone-Based Observations

This Research Infrastructure Improvement EPSCoR Research Fellows project provides a fellowship to an Associate Professor and training for a post-doctoral scholar at Boise State University. The work is conducted in collaboration with Dr. Jennifer Rudgers at the University of New Mexico. Through the fellowship, the PI will examine how drought and rainfall variability affect plant clustering in dryland ecosystems. In turn, the research will test whether shifts in clustering signal ecosystem degradation. The PI will integrate ecology, remote sensing, and data science by applying machine learning to detect individual plants in drone imagery and map vegetation patterns. By combining field experiments with high-resolution aerial imagery, this work will improve early detection of ecosystem change in drylands, which cover nearly 40 percent of Earth’s land surface and support billions of people. Training with NSF’s Sevilleta Long-Term Ecological Research program will expand the PI’s capacity to lead collaborative, experiment-driven ecological research at Boise State University. This project will test whether shifts in plant spatial patterns provide early warning signals of ecosystem degradation. It will advance understanding of spatial pattern–process feedbacks, a core ecological concept rarely tested experimentally. Leveraging an experiment that manipulates precipitation average and variability, the study will test how water stress alters the spatial structure of plant communities. Drone imagery will be collected from field experiments replicated across five common dryland ecosystem types. Machine learning will classify individual plants in the imagery to species, and replicated point-pattern analyses will quantify treatment effects on plant clustering. The fellowship will catalyze experimental research in Idaho through collaboration with NSF’s Sevilleta Long-Term Ecological Research program in New Mexico. Insights gained will strengthen collaboration among researchers in the American West and support development of new experiments, including work at the Dry Creek Experimental Watershed in Idaho. These activities will expand student training and research capacity at Boise State University. This project is supported by the EPSCoR Research Infrastructure Improvement Program: EPSCoR Research Fellows (ERF). The ERF program supports early- and mid-career investigators in eligible jurisdictions to develop collaborations at the nation’s private, government or academic research institutions. 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.