Talk Description: About 30% of global carbon stocks reside in the vegetation and deep, carbon-rich soils of Arctic tundra and boreal forest biomes. Wildfires—which are becoming more frequent with warmer and drier weather in the Arctic—have the potential to either stabilize or accelerate regional and global warming through carbon feedbacks. By comparing the impact of… Read more »
Talk Description: One of the classic state-change stories is that over-grazing and drought turn grasslands into shrubby, degraded landscapes. Land managers strive to avoid such irreversible changes, using strategies based on models of how ecosystems change. But misapplication of models can lead to poor management outcomes. Researchers at the Jornada Basin LTER site and its… Read more »
Talk Description: Coastal habitats are the first line of defense against sea-level rise and storms. At the same time, they are vulnerable to change, and can be pushed past tipping points and lost. A long-term, landscape-scale experiment with seagrass at Virginia Coast Reserve LTER is the first of its kind to show the role of… Read more »
From February 26-March 3, The Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography (ASLO) will hold its annual meeting in Honolulu, Hawai`i. The LTER Network sites will deliver oral and poster presentations on a wide range of topics, from blue carbon in salt marshes to impacts of the Eastern Pacific “warm blob” and El Niño. In… Read more »
Early this year the annual Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) Mini-Symposium scheduled for Thursday, March 5, 2015, had to be postponed when inclement weather forced the closure of the National Science Foundation (NSF) (see http://bit.ly/1NkuT9Q). At the time we reported that webcasts of the talks would be presented in blocks of two or three at… Read more »
Brandon Bestelmeyer is research leader and ecologist at the USDA Agricultural Research Service, Jornada Experimental Range and a co-PI of the Jornada Basin Long-Term Ecological Research site at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, New Mexico. His research focuses on tipping points, strategies to promote resilience, and restoration in rangeland ecosystems. This work emphasize… Read more »
Karen McGlathery is a Professor of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia. A specialist on effects of environmental change, including climate, sea-level rise, eutrophication and species invasions in coastal marine ecosystems, she has co-authored over 80 articles in journals including Nature, Limnology and Oceanography, Marine Ecology Progress Series, and Oceanography. Her most recent research… Read more »
Peter M. Groffman is a Professor at the City University of New York Advanced Science Research Center and Brooklyn College Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, and a Senior Research Fellow at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies. He has research interests in ecosystem, soil, landscape and microbial ecology, with a focus on carbon and… Read more »
Michelle Mack is a Professor in the Center for Ecosystem Science and Society at Northern Arizona University. She is an ecologist who studies the impacts of climate-sensitive disturbances, such as wildfire, on the carbon dynamics of arctic and boreal ecosystems. Her work includes two decades of field research at the NSF-funded Boreal and Arctic Longterm… Read more »
NSF Forum: The Globalization of Long Term Ecological Research Scientists conduct long-term studies of Earth’s ecosystems through international collaborations Fire moves through grasslands at NSF’s Konza Prairie LTER Site in Kansas February 11, 2013 Deserts and forests, grasslands, lakes and rivers. Over the past 33 years, long-term ecological research has been conducted at a network… Read more »
