LTER Network Office (UCSB)

The LTER Network Office supports LTER synthesis, collaboration, communication, and education using a combination of in-person and virtual committee meetings, working groups, and training in collaboration skills and graduate/early-career training in open synthesis science. The Network Office serves as an information hub for best practices, evaluation metrics, and tools for student tracking. It helps identify and cultivate new partners for LTER science, education, and training efforts, and encourages and promotes diversity through collaboration with multiple societies and organizations that promote participation by underserved groups.Read Less

Established in 1995, the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) is a research center of the University of California, Santa Barbara and was the first national synthesis center of its kind. Different from the scientific tradition of solitary lab or fieldwork, NCEAS fosters collaborative synthesis research – assembling interdisciplinary teams to distill existing data, ideas, theories, or methods drawn from many sources, across multiple fields of inquiry, to accelerate the generation of new scientific knowledge at a broad scale. NCEAS has helped create a large community of scientists from multiple disciplines, eager to collaborate to answer some of the toughest environmental questions facing society. Through collective Working Group projects, scientists share data and methods, synthesize vast amounts of information, and discover new insights and understanding to improve lives and the environment. The Center’s institutional and disciplinary "neutrality" increases the degree of trust, speeds conflict resolution, and facilitates creativity, allowing participants to share ideas freely in a highly supportive environment that handles the mundane logistical and technical issues. Our environment increases the potential for serendipitous discovery, transdisciplinary skill acquisition, and the generation of collaborative, integrative scientific insights.Read Less