Fungal friendships

By culturing fungi living within salt marsh plants, Postdoctoral Researcher Dr. Kylea Garces and PhD student Mya Darsan can learn not only what fungi are present, but how they benefit their plant hosts.

The tall and short of it

Research from Dr. Robyn Zerebecki and collaborators demonstrates that intraspecific variation can have ecosystem-level consequences.

In “The Conversation”: Climate change is already disrupting US forests and coasts

Scientists have been consistently documenting environmental changes at research sites like this one in the Cascade Mountains for decades. US Forest Service Michael Paul Nelson, Oregon State University and Peter Mark Groffman, CUNY Graduate Center Record-breaking heat waves and drought have left West Coast rivers lethally hot for salmon, literally cooked millions of mussels and… Read more »

Databits: LTER Site Bytes 2020 Coastal Edition

Each year, the LTER Information Management (IM) committee gathers updates from sites across the network related to IM system and personnel changes over the past year, compiling them into a series of ‘Site Bytes’, or site summaries. This November, the first 2020 Site Bytes that started rolling into the editors’ (virtual) office were all from… Read more »

Save Our Stream (PIE)

Save our Stream cover - Tucker

Art related projects are pursued opportunistically. One scientist is currently compiling photographs and writing short essays to be published as a book. Ideas pending funding include an illustrated coloring book of PIE plants and animals and photo or paint representations of the marsh. The PIE team contributed to the story line and illustrations for “Save… Read more »

LTER Road Trip: Getting hands-on experience with invasive species removal

Students gathered at a saltmarsh site in Massachusetts, taking a break from their regular school day routine to remove invasive perennial pepperweed plants from among the bushes and marsh grasses. Part of a suite of programs and teacher workshops aimed at educating local students and adults about marsh ecosystems, this field trip pairs ecological research with real restoration projects.

LTER Road Trip: Tracking Change in a Tidal Marsh

We stopped at the edge of the river, and Kelsey hopped out with a water quality data sensor to take readings of salinity, temperature, oxygen. Brown water churned around him as he walked slowly across the muddy bottom, silt billowing in the creek channel like clouds of smoke. The data logger is part of a network of such sensors, each taking readings from different parts of the marsh ecosystem.

LTER Road Trip: Exploring the Eddy Flux Towers

Kelsey piloted the boat up a smaller creek, stopping in front of a wooden-plank boardwalk leading to a tall eddy covariance flux tower. The tower comprises a series of instruments that take regular measurements that provide a comprehensive picture of carbon dioxide exchange, evaporation, and energy exchange in the coastal marsh. Put simply, the flux towers record the very breathing of the marsh ecosystem.