When we think of forest ecosystems, we usually picture dense thickets of trees, the vibrant buzz of insects and birds, and lush undergrowth carpeting the floor. We often fail to recognize the complexity hidden beneath the surface—a vast and ancient network of fungi, called mycorrhizae interwoven with every plant root. These 450 million year-old symbiotic… Read more »
The majority of grasslands around the world have been destroyed or converted for human use, either for agricultural or urban development. In North America, for example, only four percent of the once vast tallgrass prairies are left. Understanding grassland community dynamics could be a critical part of conserving those that remain. Plant-pollinator relationships are… Read more »
The boat whizzed past the mangrove trees in Everglades National Park, creating a blur of blue water and green leaves. Rafael Travieso, our captain and lead technician for Florida Coastal Everglades (FCE) LTER, expertly guided us through Shark Slough to a partially hidden wooden dock. Slowing down, we glided forward until the tip of the boat barely tapped the wooden structure, which created a platform for a solar panel and what looks like a barrel.
Abstracts sought for The Joint Conference on Forests and Water 2018 submission process, 05 – 09 November · Valdivia, Chile The Joint Conference on Forests and Water 2018, which brings together the II Congreso Latinoamericano Bosques y Agua and the V IUFRO Conference on Forests and Water in a Changing Environment, is ready to receive abstracts on… Read more »
Viviana Mazzei studies organisms that cannot be seen with the naked eye. When I toured the Florida Coastal Everglades LTER research sites in Everglades National Park, my eyes were drawn to the mangrove trees, the dolphins, the birds. But when Mazzei, a Ph.D. student at Florida International University, wades through these ecosystems, she is on the look-out for something much smaller: diatoms, a type of single-cell algae, that thrive in this aquatic environment.
I paused at the top of Coweeta Hydrologic Lab’s transect #327, peering down, down, down at the slope beneath me. Katie Bower, a research technician at Coweeta, and two summer interns had already started down the narrow pathway, accustomed to its slippery leaf layer and sharp contours.
During their week out at the University of Georgia Marine Institute on Sapelo Island, teachers divide their time between assisting with research in outdoor settings alongside GCE scientists and graduate students and discussing the implementation of the information and experiences into their own teaching settings.
2018 LTER ASM — Next Generation Synthesis: Strategies and Solutions Planning for the 2018 LTER All Scientists’ Meeting is underway. Dates: Pre-meeting: September 30, 2018 Science Council and other committee meetings Main Meeting: October 1-4, 2018 Credit: © Asilomar Conference GroundsLocation: Asilomar Conference Grounds, Pacific Grove, CA Planning Committee: Katharine Suding, Niwot Ridge LTER (Chair) Sven… Read more »
When most people think of the Florida Everglades, they picture alligators hiding amongst labyrinths of marsh grass, the famous boardwalks of the Anhinga Trail, or the tightly clustered mangrove trees that border both the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico. Yet, few are aware that Everglades National Park also hosts critically important ecological research sites, where scientists from the Florida Coastal Everglades (FCE) Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) station learn about the inner workings of this incredible ecosystem, as well as how it’s responding to human activities.
Researchers took advantage of a 24-year experiment maintained by the Kellogg Biological Station LTER to assess the possibility that cultivation practices might drive evolution of less-cooperative microbes.
