Stories Archive - LTER

Cameron Clay | Minneapolis-St. Paul LTER to Luquillo LTER

Posted May 30, 2026

Cameron Clay will visit Luquillo (LUQ) LTER to learn how to install, process, and analyze minirhizotron monitoring systems working with Dr. Tana Wood and Laura C. Rubio Lebrón. At MSP, Cameron will deploy a minirhizotron system into an existing floodplain forest experiment. The skills he gains in Puerto Rico will allow for the creation of parallel projects at these two LTER sites to test how extreme fluctuations in soil moisture affect root traits.

Voices of the Forest: Frog Bio-acoustics in the LUQ-LTER

Posted April 20, 2026

Sometimes, the best way to understand an ecosystem is simply to stop and listen.

Photo Contest Winners

Posted January 22, 2026

Congratulations to the winner of the 2025 LTER photo contest: Leonardo A. Rivera-Pagan, Luquillo LTER, and Rachael Brenneman, Konza Prairie.

Three new SPARC Synthesis Groups demonstrate the value of long-term data collected across ecosystems

Posted June 27, 2025

The LTER Network Office is excited to announce that three Scientific Peers Advancing Research Collaborations (SPARC) proposals were funded this year. The three groups will meet in person at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis for one week, starting in the fall.

Two LTER Sites Emerge from Hurricanes Intact

Posted October 21, 2022

researcher up to her armpits in marshwater

Two separate hurricanes tore through LTER sites this past month—but the Luquillo LTER and Florida Coastal Everglades LTER are mostly intact.

Ecosystems are resistant or resilient to hurricanes, but not both

Posted April 26, 2022

Dr. Christopher Patrick stands in a brown stream in front of several huge downed trees in the mud.

Ecosystems resist devastation from hurricanes by choosing either of two strategies: high resistance or high resilience.

Ready-to-teach R Environmental Datasets: the lterdatasampler R package

Posted April 11, 2022

We are excited to share with the broader R community a new collection of 8 data samples geared towards teaching environmental data science!

Stream Dissolved Nitrogen Cycling Responds to Human Activity across the Landscape

Posted March 30, 2022

A shallow stream runs through red rocks amid a

A new global data synthesis of stream chemistry indicates human activities reduce streams ability to retain and transform nutrients.

Remembering Dr. Frank H. Wadsworth, founder of the Luquillo LTER

Posted January 14, 2022

The world lost a giant of forest conservation with the passing of the USDA International Institute of Tropical Forestry (IITF) emeritus scientist Dr. Frank H. Wadsworth on January 5th, 2022.

Coordination is everything: Species richness synchrony predicts ecosystem stability across ecosystems

Posted October 28, 2021

The LTER Synchrony Synthesis group links richness synchrony to ecosystem stability in a new study, showing synchrony is a key control on ecosystem functions.

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