Research Theme: Disturbance Patterns

Hurricane Matthew pounded the Georgia coast on October 8. On Sapelo Island, home to the University of Georgia Marine Institute and Georgia Coastal Ecosystem (GCE) LTER field operations, trees were knocked down across the landscape, and power was out for a week. The Marine Institute itself escaped major flooding only because the storm didn’t pass… Read more »

What will the future feel like in our forests? In six plots at the Hubbard Brook Long Term Ecological Research Site in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, the trees already know. Dr. Pamela Templer has created a robust simulation of the climate—warmer summer temperatures and later snowfall—that these forests will experience within the century…. Read more »

The IPCC projects that, even if humans succeed in keeping temperatures below the 2°C target set in Paris, sea level will rise 0.28 to 0.61 m this century. With this amount of sea level rise, salt water pulses from high tide floods and storm surges will become ever-more common in coastal ecosystems. Multiple LTER sites are running experiments… Read more »