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The LTER Network Office is pleased to announce seven site exchange fellowships in 2026. Site exchanges are designed to facilitate between-site comparisons and support the development of cross-site projects. The 2026 awardees exemplify a variety of approaches to such collaboration, including: shared sampling efforts, development and dissemination of new methods, collaboration on shared best practices, and work toward joint publications. Site exchange travel will take place during over the next year and we will plan to update the LTER community on project outcomes in Spring 2027.

2026 Site Exchange Fellows

Shirah Strock | Virginia Coast Reserve LTER to Santa Barbara Coastal LTER

Doctoral student Shirah Strock will travel from the Virginia Coast Reserve (VCR) LTER to the Santa Barbara Coastal (SBC) LTER. She will receive hands-on training in ViQi, an AI platform used to quantify sessile organism...

Vivian (Lin) Hou | California Current LTER to Northeast Shelf LTER

Lin Hou, A PhD student at the California Current (CCE) LTER site, will visit the Northeast Shelf (NES) LTER to refine her Imaging Flow Cytobot (IFCB) analysis techniques, drawing on approaches used in the Sosik...

Dr. Nicholas Medina | Morton Arboretum to Minneapolis-St. Paul LTER

Dr. Nicholas Medina will travel to the Minneapolis-St. Paul (MSP) LTER and sample soils for eDNA extraction and ITS sequencing. The results will complement MSP data on tree distribution, soil nutrients, heavy metals, and earthworms,...

Brittany Washington | Baltimore Ecosystem Study to Two Urban LTERs

Brittany Washington, a PhD student with the Baltimore Ecosystem Study, will visit the two LTER urban sites: Central Arizona-Phoenix (CAP) LTER and Minneapolis-St. Paul (MSP) LTER to become familiar with groundwater connectivity and how it...

Melissa Frost | Kellogg LTER to Konza LTER

Melissa plans to visit the Konza Prairie (KNZ) LTER to observe a field trip in action and get inspiration for what could be possible in the KBS partnership network and schoolyard research. She is planning...

Cameron Clay | Minneapolis-St. Paul LTER to Luquillo LTER

Cameron Clay will visit Luquillo (LUQ) LTER to learn how to install, process, and analyze minirhizotron monitoring systems working with Dr. Tana Wood and Laura C. Rubio Lebrón. At MSP, Cameron will deploy a minirhizotron...

Grace Cawley | California Current LTER to Northeast Shelf LTER

Grace Cawley will travel from the California Current Ecosystem (CCE) LTER to the Northeast Shelf (NES) LTER to conduct field and laboratory work with scientists at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. She will draw on protocols...