A new synthesis from the Baltimore Ecosystem Study shows that residents with greater land and water cover in the Metropolitan Baltimore, Maryland area were less likely to perceive environmental problems.
An LTER cross site synthesis effort reveals that soil carbon availability determines nitrogen mineralization and nitrification rates across a wide diversity of terrestrial ecosystems.
Scientists have been consistently documenting environmental changes at research sites like this one in the Cascade Mountains for decades. US Forest Service Michael Paul Nelson, Oregon State University and Peter Mark Groffman, CUNY Graduate Center Record-breaking heat waves and drought have left West Coast rivers lethally hot for salmon, literally cooked millions of mussels and… Read more »
The National Science Foundation (NSF) recently announced ten new awards for its Critical Zone Collaborative Network (CZCN), and LTER sites will play a prominent role in four of them. The awards fund a wide range of investigations to better understand the ‘critical zone’, the area of our planet where water, air, soil, rock and living… Read more »
Credit: Laura Templeton We’ve all spent the majority of 2020 stuck inside. As we’ve been staring out our windows longing to return to our ‘normal’ lives, where we can meet co-workers in the coffee room or catch up with our favorite podcasts on our commute, we might have noticed some interesting wildlife behavior. Maybe we… Read more »
by Ian Yesilonis (Baltimore Ecosystem Study LTER) Walking through the woods and observing the trees and animals is something I have always loved to do growing up in Baltimore. Our temperate deciduous forests in the city are typically smaller patches; however, one park, the Gwynns Falls/Leakin Park (1,216 acres), is quite large and also has big… Read more »
Multidisciplinary research is a positive shift toward understanding the complexity of human-natural systems. However, combining social science and ecological science methods does not necessarily equate to integration of ideas. Drawing from their urban ecology and environmental anthropology backgrounds, a group of LTER researchers propose using conceptual frameworks that go beyond characterizing social-ecological interactions as stepwise… Read more »
Dan Dillon, Ben Glass-Siegel, Nate Vandiver, and I stood at the edge of a Baltimore road. Cars whizzed by overhead as Glass-Siegel and Vandiver picked their way through dense grass to the river running swiftly beneath the bridge, the blades swishing against their long pants as they blazed a path to the rocky shoreline.
If you live in a city, chances are you’ve seen an abandoned lot or two. While urban dwellers may not immediately think of vacant lots as harboring rare species and scenic natural vistas, they are are often candidates for urban conservation, restoration, or greening projects. The success of such projects depends on understanding what processes control… Read more »
New research from the Baltimore Ecosystem Study LTER site reveals that pharmaceutical residues in urban streams may be facilitating the proliferation and persistence of highly resistant bacteria that can survive despite the presence of these drugs.
