The Alabama Center for Ecological Resilience (ACER) Consortium came together to investigate how biodiversity influences an ecosystem’s ability to resist and recover from disturbance, specifically the ecosystems of the northern Gulf of Mexico to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
Over the next 3 years, ACER scientists will conduct field and large scale manipulative lab experiments to: 1.) assess ecological processes (productivity, nitrogen cycling and predation), (ii) ecosystem structure (measured by density, biomass & multiple measures of biodiversity), and (iii) ecosystem services (habitat provisioning & shoreline stabilization) across a gradient of oiling exposure that resulted from the DWH incident, and 2.) investigate how the genetic, taxonomic and functional diversity influenced the northern Gulf of Mexico ecosystem’s response to oiling.
View ACER-generated education products!
ACER Education and Outreach Site
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ACER Overview Video: