Disturbance Patterns Archives

When Shade Isn’t Enough: Climate Change in the Forest Understory

Posted August 22, 2025

Once thought to be natural refuges, old-growth forests are warming faster than we imagined.

Shaped by fire: the Bonanza Creek LTER

Posted September 27, 2024

Bonanza Creek was quick to remind me of its true nature: everything about its ecology follows the flame.

Burned forest, bleached reef: LTER sites adapt to learn from disturbance

Posted January 3, 2024

How the Andrews Forest and Moorea Coral Reef LTER sites respond to disturbance highlights the struggle and opportunity that come with an irreparably altered ecosystem.

Sea urchins mothers can help their offspring withstand marine heatwaves

Posted December 5, 2023

Purple sea urchin embryos whose mothers were exposed to heatwaves have greater tolerance to high temperatures, suggesting a pathway to resilience for this keystone species in kelp forests.

Do fish graze the way for coral recovery?

Posted November 4, 2022

Fish clear space for corals to grow in small scale experiments. But does fish grazing cause reefs to recover faster? A new study says no.

Two LTER Sites Emerge from Hurricanes Intact

Posted October 21, 2022

researcher up to her armpits in marshwater

Two separate hurricanes tore through LTER sites this past month—but the Luquillo LTER and Florida Coastal Everglades LTER are mostly intact.

Taking it to the park: mapping sawgrass vulnerability to peat collapse in the Florida Everglades

Posted October 18, 2022

Luke Lamb-Wotton maps sawgrass vulnerability to saltwater intrusion and peat collapse at the FCE LTER site.

Ecosystems are resistant or resilient to hurricanes, but not both

Posted April 26, 2022

Dr. Christopher Patrick stands in a brown stream in front of several huge downed trees in the mud.

Ecosystems resist devastation from hurricanes by choosing either of two strategies: high resistance or high resilience.

In Search of Commonality: Plant communities exhibit a wide variety of responses to global change

Posted December 20, 2021

All plants are somehow affected by global change, but their responses are inconsistent between ecosystems, a LTER Synthesis group finds.

Climate change makes kelp less nutritious

Posted December 1, 2021

For Southern California reefs and beaches, giant kelp fuels the food web and creates an environment in which biodiversity booms. But the nutritional quality of kelp is lower than it once was, a new study from the Santa Barbara Coastal LTER shows. The culprit? Climate change and warming ocean water, coauthors Dr. Heili Lowman and Kyle Emery find.

Gallery

A controlled burn in Cedar Creek oakland

shallow gravelly streambed with helicopter and tussocky hills in the background

Smoke from a forest fire in an Alaskan boreal forest near Bonanza Creek LTER

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Plastic covering excludes rain from plots of desert shrubs.

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Researchers use rainout shelters at the Matta International LTER site in Israel to simulate extended droughts and observe changes in ecosystem productivity and species composition. The Matta site is part of a distributed network of over 100 sites across the globe inspired by long term experiments of the U.S. LTER Network. Similar structures without plastic panels serve as controls. Image courtesy of International Drought Experiment

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E Zambello/LTER Network Office CC BY 4.0" data-envira-item-id="82145" data-envira-retina="https://lternet.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Everglades-National-Park-scaled-e1574660761311.jpg" data-thumb="https://lternet.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Everglades-National-Park-scaled-e1574660761311-75x50_c.jpg" data-title="Everglades National Park" data-envirabox='site_images_84630' itemprop="contentUrl">

Florida Coastal Everglades LTER site, part of Everglades National park

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Fast Forward Future, by David Buckley Borden. 2017.

Lake Bonney Camp, Antarctica. Steve Chignell, 2016.

Erin Wiersma imprinting charred biomass.

Members of the Art & Ecology program at VCR LTER.

Jellyfish and Krill in Antarctica by Cynthia Ruben and Susanne Menden-Deuer, 2017

different types of plant community change

Grassland plot experiments at Cedar Creek LTER in Minnesota.

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Sand dunes giving way to taller shrubs that have rapidly expanded on these barrier islands thanks to a warming climate. The shrubs are increasing erosion and changing food-web dynamics across the Virginia coastline. E Zambello/LTER-NCO CC BY 4.0

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A northern temperate forest on a summer afternoon.

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Pocillopora grandis in Mo'orea, French Polynesia.

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Two young moose forage in an Alaskan forest

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One management goal in the Boreal forests of Alaska is to maintain habitat diversity to support wildlife, such as the mother and baby moose pictured here. JLS Photography Alaska via Flickr CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

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Overhead view of Harvard Forest LTER site.

Understory resprouting after an experimental burn.

vegetated landscape with exposed soil in a slump

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A Crown_of-thorns seastar or COTS (Acanthaster planci) feeding on a coral colony. MCR LTER. CC BY-SA 4.0

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Erika Zambello/LTER NCO. CC BY-SA 4.0." data-envira-gallery-id="site_images_84630" data-envira-index="31" data-envira-item-id="46166" data-envira-src="https://lternet.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/vcr-2-600x400.jpg" data-envira-srcset="https://lternet.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/vcr-2-600x400.jpg 400w, https://lternet.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/vcr-2-600x400.jpg 2x" data-title="vcr-cement-blocks" itemprop="thumbnailUrl" data-no-lazy="1" data-envirabox="site_images_84630" data-automatic-caption="vcr-cement-blocks - Submerged cement blocks rest below the sea level. Erika Zambello/LTER NCO. CC BY-SA 4.0." data-envira-height="200" data-envira-width="300" />