Awards

Human activities in rivers and watersheds have altered enormously the timing, magnitude and nature of inputs of materials such as water, sediments, nutrients and organic matter to estuaries. An important but neglected linkage between land and coastal waters is the input of dissolved and particulate organic carbon and organic nitrogen. This long term ecological research… Read more »

The Plum Island Ecosystems (PIE) LTER is an integrated research, education and outreach program whose goal is to develop a predictive understanding of the long-term response of watershed and estuarine ecosystems at the land-sea interface to changes in climate, land use and sea level. The principal study site is the Plum Island Sound estuary, its… Read more »

Intellectual Merit: The Plum Island Ecosystems (PIE) LTER is an integrated research, education and outreach program whose goal is to develop a predictive understanding of the long-term response of watershed and estuarine ecosystems at the land-sea interface to changes in climate, land use, and sea level. The principal study site is the Plum Island Sound… Read more »

Intellectual Merit: The Plum Island Ecosystems (PIE) LTER has, since its inception in 1998, been working towards a predictive understanding of the long-term response of coupled land-estuary-ocean ecosystems to changes in three drivers: climate, sea level, and human activities. The Plum Island Estuary-LTER includes the coupled Parker, Rowley, and Ipswich River watersheds, estuarine areas including… Read more »

The Plum Island Ecosystems (PIE) LTER (Long Term Ecological Research) site is developing a predictive understanding of the response of a linked watershed-marsh-estuarine system in northeastern Massachusetts to rapid environmental change. Over the last 30 years, surface sea water temperatures in the adjacent Gulf of Maine have risen at 3 times the global average, rates… Read more »

The Plum Island Ecosystems Long Term Ecological Research (PIE LTER) site consists of a linked watershed-marsh-estuarine system connected to the Gulf of Maine. The goal of the PIE LTER is to advance our predictive understanding of the long-term response of coupled land-marsh-estuary-ocean ecosystems to changes in three key drivers: climate, sea level and human activities…. Read more »

This study will establish an LTER (Long-Term Ecological Research) site in Santa Barbara, CA that will focus on ecological systems at the land/ocean-margin. This location is typical of many semi-arid regions in that it includes a large number of watersheds with episodic stream flow that vary in size and land use. The focal coastal ecosystem… Read more »

The Santa Barbara Coastal LTER (SBC LTER) is an interdisciplinary research and education program established in April, 2000 to investigate the relative importance of land and ocean processes in structuring ecosystems at the land-sea margin. The principal study area is the Santa Barbara Channel and the coastal watersheds that drain into it, and the focal… Read more »

The McMurdo Dry Valleys, Antarctica, are a mosaic of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems in a cold desert. The McMurdo Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) project has been observing these ecosystems since 1993 and this award will support key long-term measurements, manipulation experiments, synthesis, and modeling to test current theories on ecosystem structure and function. Data… Read more »

Coral reefs are of great ecological importance, having the highest species diversity of any marine habitat and ranking near the top of all ecosystems with respect to annual total gross productivity. The communities are supported structurally by reef-building corals and trophically by efficient recycling. The key biotic interaction underlying reef systems is the mutualistic relationship… Read more »