LTER News from the NCO | 2017 Summer

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July 15, 2017 Governance Update The LTER Science Council and Executive Board met at Hubbard Brook, May 16-19, where they welcomed representatives of three new LTER sites, discussed some great science, and made a few key decisions: LTER bylaws have been revised to refer to the Network Communications Office (NCO), rather than the LTER Network Office (LNO) and to clarify the relationships among the LTER Executive Board, the Science Council, the Network Communications Office, and the Environmental Data… Read more »

May/June LTER Science Update Newsletter

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May/June LTER Newsletter

In May and June, the Science Update Newsletter covers: laboratory findings, by Santa Barbara Coastal LTER and other researchers, that show the sensitivity of sea urchin fertilization success to ocean acidification, published in Ecology and Evolution; public preferences of cultural ecosystem services, amassed by researchers at Coweeta LTER; from Luquillo LTER, long-term patterns of arthropod abundance… Read more »

A Glimpse into the Future: How Land Use Decisions Will Impact Forest Function

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How can researchers project the ways in which land-use changes will affect ecosystem services when they don’t yet know what course development will take? Integrated scenario analysis models several possible trajectories to examine the interactive effects that land-use change could have on ecosystem structure and function.

Just How Does Nitrogen Drive Change in Plant Communities?

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Nitrogen enrichment can dramatically change the existing environment for plants and typically leads to increased productivity, decresed diversity, and shifts plant community composition. But what mechanisms are responsible for these changes? Researchers designed a multi-site experiment to find out, experimentally manipulating each of three possible drivers across mesocosms of three ecosystem types (tall grass prairie, alpine tundra, and desert grassland).