By Natasha Griffin The lake ice crunches beneath my boots with each tentative step I take. Realistically, I know there’s not much danger here—I’m standing atop Lake Bonney, one of the permanently frozen lakes of Antarctica’s McMurdo Dry Valleys. The ice underfoot is at least a few meters thick, creating a sturdy barrier between me… Read more »
Molly Fisher and James Guinnip pen this entry for the SSALTER Blog, describing stream research in the Konza prairie Ecosystem.
https://edirepository.org/featured/featured-20200501.00
by Jannine Chamorro, Moorea Coral Reef LTER Last September I had the opportunity to participate in a project studying coral bleaching in Mo’orea, French Polynesia. This was the first time I had ever worked in a remote field location. While initially the thought of flying to a place I could not see on a map… Read more »
LTER sites preset extraordinary opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students to learn about the process of science — and to discover whether their strengths and interests fit the demands of field ecology. Russell Schmitt and Sally Holbrook discuss how the Moorea Coral Reef site mentors undergraduate students and the rewards of the experience.
We’ve appreciated the many landscape images posted by LTER sites over the past month to remind us of the beauty and diversity of our field sites waiting for us when we can return to our regular field research.
Many ecologists are now faced with a choice: continue field measurements and manipulations or halt them voluntarily and accept the cost to their science and sometimes their budgets. the LTER Network Office offers some considerations for those faced with this difficult decision.
As anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions continue to increase, scientists have now recognized seagrass meadows—which typically have high rates of carbon storage—as important ‘blue carbon’ sinks. However, rising ocean temperatures threaten seagrass meadows, along with their ability to retain carbon. This underlines the need for precise ecosystem data on the vulnerability and resilience of these meadows… Read more »
A recent analysis of collaboration in the LTER Network reveals that LTER-related publications involve more collaborators, more institutions, persist for longer, and cover greater distances than other publications in the field of ecology.
Many scientists have pivotal experiences during their undergraduate education that lead them to choose a career in science, such as opportunities to conduct hands-on research or work closely with mentors. Unfortunately, it’s a challenge to measure the direct impact these foundational experiences have on participants. In a new paper, however, researchers from Harvard Forest LTER… Read more »
