LTER Network News: 2018 December

LTER Network News is a forum for sharing news and activities from across the LTER Network. This is our water cooler. If you have personnel changes, new grants, cross-Network activities that might interest your LTER colleagues, please send them along to weiss@nceas.lternet.edu.

Q&A with Lauren Alteio: First isolation of giant virus genomes in soil from a forest ecosystem

Soil sample collection from the Harvard Forest in Petersham, Massachusetts.

Researchers Frederik Schulz (US Department of Energy’s Joint Genome Institute) and Lauren Alteio (University of Massachusetts) have discovered sixteen new giant viruses in soil samples from a long-term research site at the Harvard Forest LTER, described in a Nature Communications paper published in November 2018. Giant viruses are larger than most single celled organisms, and tend… Read more »

Webinar series on 21st century field education

Fiona Jevin in the field at Harvard Forest in 2010.

The Undergraduate Field Experiences Research Network (UFERN) is pleased to announce a new webinar series focused on 21st century field education. The webinar series will bring expertise to our discussions and thinking that support the goal of UFERN by moving field learning experiences into the 21st century. Please join us for the first webinar in this series… Read more »

Inaugural LTER Idea Cafe Generates Innovative Pitches

The All-Scientists’ Meeting only happens every 3 years. The workshops offer an amazing smorgasbord of fresh results, new theory, tools, and opportunities to make progress on old challenges. But as the organizing committee contemplated the 2018 All Scientists’ Meeting, we also wanted to create a space for the Network to look toward the future–a way… Read more »