All are welcome to contribute ideas and/or participate in the ILTER Spring 2026 Coordinating Committee teleconference, which will take place on Wednesday, April 29, from 12:00 to 14:00 UTC.
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What have sea urchins got to do with climate change?
Students engaged in a productive struggle to come to terms with what data needed to be graphed before they could answer the questions.
Network Onboarding 2026
July 8, 2026 @ 9:00 am-10:00 am –
Are you a new graduate student, undergraduate, investigator, or staff member at an LTER site? After you get settled into your local site, join us to learn about the integrative science and opportunities that being part of a national network can open up. The LTER network onboarding provides a brief introduction to the immense variety of research that is carried out across the Network. We’ll also touch on where to find network-level resources and offer an introduction to the data systems of the LTER Network.
Returning Home to California’s Kelp Forests
As a native of Santa Barbara, I grew up exploring the tidepools, splashing in the waves, and kayaking the waters that are now part of the Santa Barbara Coastal-LTER. Now, thanks to the ARETs program, I am better equipped to share my knowledge about this special area with my students.
McMurdo and Konza featured in PBS Series
LIFE UNEARTHED with Ariel Waldman is a visually striking science-driven docu-series that reveals Earth’s ecosystems through radical shifts in scale—from microscopic wildlife to the planet’s most iconic species, and even the potential for life beyond Earth. Hosted by explorer Ariel Waldman, the series spans environments near and far, from the sweeping American Prairies to the alien… Read more »
Arts and Humanities Working Group: David Paul Bayles and Fred Swanson
April 2, 2026 @ 12:00 pm-1:00 pm – The LTER arts and humanities working group will host the next virtual get-together in our workshop series on April 2 at 3pm EST/12pm PST for those interested in advancing arts-humanities work within their sites and across the Network. Photographer David Bayles and scientist Fred Swanson of Andrews Forest LTER will co-present featuring David’s Old Growth Dialogue project and their collaborative […]
Constructing Collaborations: An LTER Science Charrette
May 6, 2026 @ 9:00 am-10:00 am –
The 2026 LTER strategic plan clarifies the types of science which take best advantage of LTER’s assets and approach. But developing the next generation of LTER science demands the involvement of the whole LTER+ community.
We invite researchers and students—inside and outside the Network—to help brainstorm and shape specific projects that address elements of the strategic plan. Timing is ideal for developing follow-on proposals to the current synthesis opportunity (due September 16, 2026).
Do you:
- Have an idea for synthesizing research across sites?
- Interested in bringing skills to a synthesis project, but not sure how to connect?
- Wanting to collaborate with the LTER Network, but unsure what shape that might take?
- Curious about Network-level science, partnerships and support?
After a brief introduction, most of the session will be spent in facilitated small groups for discussion of project ideas. Four breakout groups are planned, with additional groups possible on request. The proposed initial topics are quite broad. We envision discussions zeroing in on specific, tractable projects.
1) Driver-response relationships under novel environmental conditions and new ecosystem states: Identify consistent driver-response relationships across sites and develop hypotheses based on shared mechanistic understanding of how sites may respond to novel environmental conditions.
2) Motivating research framework: Develop a research framework that can motivate new research questions by incorporating mechanistic understanding of the conditions that shape ecosystem processes yet allowing for surprises such as new organisms (e,g, new species), disturbances, evolution, or climatic extremes that change the “rules of the game.”
3) The path forward with AI. Probe how AI and knowledge-guided machine learning could be used to accelerate synthesis, including testing and assessing the use of AI to construct synthesis datasets. Explore the potential for using existing LTER data for training domain-specific AI models.
4) Science to Management. Many LTER sites address important resource management questions in their specific systems and there are also common threads across sites, such as: intercalibration and standardization; restoration approaches; testing new techniques; targeting efforts and establishing scales of variability; developing new detection and monitoring technology.
Natural Areas Conference Call for Proposals
The 2026 Natural Areas Conference: Where Science Meets Stewardship is scheduled for October 5 – 8, 2026, in Asheville, NC. NAC26 is a great opportunity for LTER Network research scientists to share their work with practitioners—and to discuss use-inspired collaborations. NAA’s conference is by practitioners for practitioners, offering access to quality science, new knowledge, and experience-based practices that bridge… Read more »
2026-2035 LTER Network Strategic plan
The 2026-2035 LTER Network Strategic plan focuses on identifying and prioritizing the activities that require a network. This is not a plan for site activities, nor even a plan for the Network Office. Instead, we started with the question: “What questions can we answer and what impact can we have because we are a network?” The LTER Executive… Read more »
Technical Aide, Kellogg Biological Station
Position Summary This is a temporary or an on-call position. Provides technical support. Responsibilities may include computer programming or operations; research support; medical patient care; technical equipment maintenance, repair, fabrication or operation; or other technical support functions. Unit Position Summary Technicians work on the Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER), Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center (GLBRC) and… Read more »
Top Stories
LTER at ESA, 2026
Studying post-fire Snowpack at the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest
2026 Site Exchanges Announced
The caddisfly stole my heart
Shirah Strock | Virginia Coast Reserve LTER to Santa Barbara Coastal LTER
Vivian (Lin) Hou | California Current LTER to Northeast Shelf LTER
Dr. Nicholas Medina | Morton Arboretum to Minneapolis-St. Paul LTER
Brittany Washington | Baltimore Ecosystem Study to Two Urban LTERs
Melissa Frost | Kellogg LTER to Konza LTER
Cameron Clay | Minneapolis-St. Paul LTER to Luquillo LTER