Luquillo LTER Precipitation Measured at El Verde Rain Gauge 1975-2014

Patterns of biodiversity, such as the increase toward the tropics and the peaked curve during ecological succession, are fundamental phenomena for ecology. Such patterns have multiple, interacting causes, but temperature emerges as a dominant factor across organisms from microbes to trees and mammals, and across terrestrial, marine, and freshwater environments. However, there is little consensus on the underlying mechanisms, even as global temperatures increase and the need to predict their effects becomes more pressing. The purpose of this project is to generate and test theory for how temperature impacts biodiversity through its effect on biochemical processes and metabolic rate. A combination of standardized surveys in the field and controlled experiments in the field and laboratory measure diversity of three taxa -- trees, invertebrates, and microbes -- and key biogeochemical processes of decomposition in seven forests distributed along a geographic gradient of increasing temperature from cold temperate to warm tropical. This daily precipitation data from Luquillo LTER site, 1975-2014, recorded at El Verde meteorological station, was retrieved from the CLIMDB/HYDRODB data base at http://www.fsl.orst.edu/climhy/ as part of a macrosystems biodiversity and latitude project supported by the National Science Foundation under Cooperative Agreement DEB#1065836.

生物多样性格局——诸如向热带地区递增的分布规律以及生态演替过程中的单峰分布曲线特征——是生态学领域的核心基础现象。这类格局的成因复杂且相互耦合，但无论对于微生物、树木与哺乳类等各类生物，还是陆地、海洋与淡水各类生境而言，温度均为主导性影响因子。然而，尽管全球气温持续攀升，预测其生态效应的需求愈发迫切，学界针对其背后的内在作用机制仍未达成广泛共识。本项目旨在构建并检验相关理论，以阐明温度如何通过影响生化过程与代谢速率，进而对生物多样性产生调控作用。本研究结合野外标准化调查与野外、实验室控制实验，对沿从寒温带至暖热带的温度升高地理梯度分布的7片森林中的3个生物类群——树木、无脊椎动物与微生物——的多样性，以及核心的分解生物地球化学过程开展测定。本数据集所包含的1975-2014年日降水数据，采自埃尔韦尔德（El Verde）气象站的卢基略长期生态研究（Luquillo LTER）站点；数据从http://www.fsl.orst.edu/climhy/ 的CLIMDB/HYDRODB数据库获取，为美国国家科学基金会（National Science Foundation）通过合作协议DEB#1065836资助的大尺度生物多样性与纬度梯度项目的组成部分。