Awards

The Baltimore Ecosystem Study (BES) was initiated as an LTER project in 1997, designed to understand the controls and interactions of urban ecosystem structure and function. This project will continue that long-term line of research and will expand it to address 3 fundamental issues: 1) The spatial and temporal relationships of socio-economic, ecological, and physical… Read more »

Urban populations continue to expand around the world, highlighting the growing need for scientific information to deepen our understanding of ecological and social factors that influence the structure and function of urban ecosystems. A robust set of theories and models of cities as social-ecological systems is necessary to help cities adapt to changing conditions, and… Read more »

For about 20 years, researchers with the Baltimore Long-Term Environmental Research (LTER) project have studied ecology within the city of Baltimore. When it started, the Baltimore LTER project was highly unusual because most ecologists were working in more natural environments. This was one of the very first urban ecology sites. A long-term approach was needed… Read more »

This project will continue long-term studies of response and recovery of Southern Appalachian forested ecosystems to disturbances. To understand and predict responses to current and emerging environmental problems requires an expansion of research perspective from a watershed to a landscape. The project will emphasize new studies along a complex environmental gradient with a continued emphasis… Read more »

This research will continue investigations on the extent and complexity of natural and human-caused disturbances, and how they interact with ecological processes along environmental gradients in the landscape. This work builds upon extensive long-term studies of landscape processes in the southern Appalachians and spans four levels of resolution (plot, watershed, landscape and region) in the… Read more »

The Coweeta LTER Research Program has evolved since 1980 from a site-based to a site- and region-based project examining the effects of disturbance and environmental gradients on biogeochemical cycling, and the underlying watershed ecosystem processes that regulate and respond to those cycles. The objective for the proposed 2002-2008 research is to advance scientific understanding of… Read more »

The Coweeta Hydrologic Lab Long-Term Ecological Research Project was one of six original LTER projects established in 1980. Nestled in the Southern Applachian Mountains in western North Carolina, the field site is built upon a long history of U.S. Forest Service watershed manipulations and water quality and quantity monitoring dating from the early 1930s. Historically,… Read more »

The southern Appalachian Mountains are a biodiversity hotspot undergoing rapid development. They harbor unique species and assemblages, and are the source of freshwater as well as a recreational destination for human populations in nearby metropolitan areas. The total rural and urban population of the southern Appalachian region is expected to continue growing at double-digit rates… Read more »

The forests of the southern Appalachian Mountains are home to the most diverse assemblage of trees, amphibians, mollusks, fish, crayfish, millipedes, fungi and other organisms in North America. The steep rugged landscape interacts with a wet climate to create many kinds of habitats, each with its own responses to environmental change. These forests have been… Read more »