LTEaRTS at Florida Coastal Everglades (FCE)

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Just Below the Surface: 1915 (The Founding of Miami Beach) by Xavier Cortada, 2015

FCE LTEaRTs has an ongoing partnership with artist Xavier Cortada, the Tropical Botanic Artists Collective, and the AIRIE program (Artist in Residence in Everglades). Artists have worked with FCE scientists to produce over 20 exhibits since 2012 and professional development for teachers.

LTER Road Trip: Coweeta Listening Project

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Jason Meador of the Land Trust for the Little Tennessee talks to ICON students in Cat Creek.

I flip open my copy of The Franklin Press while sipping coffee at a field station, and there, in a bi-monthly column, is an article by Coweeta Hydrologic Lab staff, answering the scientific questions of local citizens. The column is just one part of the Coweeta Listening Project (CLP), an initiative of the Coweeta LTER.

LTER Road Trip: Real Time Evolution

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A red legged salamander from Coweeta LTER site.

Salamanders are very sensitive to changes in both precipitation and temperature, and scientists at the Coweeta Hydrologic Lab have discovered that they represent a hotbed of evolutionary activity. That’s right – evolution is happening before our eyes, in real time.

LTER Road Trip: Hemlock Hospice

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The hemlock is a native tree species that was once common from northern Alabama to Nova Scotia. Stretching tall with thick needles, the hemlock creates an entire ecosystem beneath its large branches. In the Smoky Mountains, its shade used to cool streams just enough to allow the eastern brook trout to thrive. Unfortunately, these hemlocks are in dramatic decline.

The Grasshopper Sparrow – Breeding Nomad of the Grassland Prairie

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At first glance, the grasshopper sparrow may not look like much. Native to the tallgrass prairies of the American Great Plains, it’s a small brown and black-speckled bird with a wingspan of 8 inches. But this little bird is gaining recognition for its unusual behavior: it has an amazing ability to cover long distances over… Read more »

Grow with the flow: evaluating the interactive effects of seawater conditions on coral growth

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Although coral reefs have been the subject of ecological studies for nearly a century, the role that environmental conditions play in coral development is still a partial mystery. LTER researchers at Mo’orea Coral Reef have been exploring coral-environmental interactions in an effort to better understand coral growth. The team recently investigated how two key abiotic… Read more »

LTER Road Trip: How Tiny Algae Could Predict Changes in the Everglades

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Coastal mangroves in Everglades National park

Viviana Mazzei studies organisms that cannot be seen with the naked eye. When I toured the Florida Coastal Everglades LTER research sites in Everglades National Park, my eyes were drawn to the mangrove trees, the dolphins, the birds. But when Mazzei, a Ph.D. student at Florida International University, wades through these ecosystems, she is on the look-out for something much smaller: diatoms, a type of single-cell algae, that thrive in this aquatic environment.

2018 Ocean Science Meeting Presentations

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The Ocean Sciences Meeting (OSM) has become an important venue for scientific exchange across a wide range of marine science disciplines, especially as human impacts on the oceans reach unprecedented levels. OSM, co-sponsored by the American Geophysical Union (AGU), the Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography (ASLO), and The Oceanography Society (TOS), will be held 11–16 February, in… Read more »

Why smaller oysters? Maybe not Native American shellfishing

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Five thousand years ago, Native Americans lived and thrived on Georgia’s coast. Shellfishing, especially the Eastern oyster (Crassostrea virginica), was a significant cultural practice of these coastal Natives Americans. Today, Georgia’s coast is peppered with oyster shell deposits from long-term native American consumption. While studying archaeological shell deposits on Georgia’s coast, researchers with the Georgia Coastal… Read more »

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