Designing a long-term experiment to withstand the rising tides
Spend a day in the field with Virginia Coast Reserve researchers as they investigate ghost forests formed by sea level rise.
Slow Research to Understand Fast Change
By harnessing decades of rich data, scientists are beginning to forecast future conditions and plan ways to manage, mitigate, or adapt to likely changes in ecosystems that will impact human economies, health and wellbeing.
Choose Your Poison: Plant Disease Outbreaks May Be Curbed by Periodic Wildfire
Wildfires have made headlines worldwide in recent years — and for good reason. Evidence points to increasing wildfire frequency and intensity across many vulnerable ecosystems as climate change impacts grow ever more evident. However, periodic wildfires in ecosystems adapted to them can actually help inhibit plant disease outbreaks, according to new research from Cedar Creek… Read more »
LTER Metacommunity Synthesis Working Group provides roadmap for synthesizing long-term and large-scale data
Earth is in the midst of a biodiversity crisis that is expected to worsen into the future. Scientists are scrambling to study how species interactions are responding to climate and ecosystem change, but often lack long-term, large-scale datasets that help determine which processes are most relevant in a given ecosystem. In a new paper, members… Read more »
2020 LTER Research Roundup
Now that 2021 is here, most of us are ready to put last year behind us for good. However, 2020 wasn’t all bad from an LTER standpoint. Dozens of impressive research articles from across the network were published in top journals. We featured many of these in our monthly newsletters, but we couldn’t get to… Read more »
The Edge of Agriculture: Pests and Crop Configuration
In agricultural landscapes, predatory insects provide an essential ecosystem service — valued at billions of dollars annually — by suppressing pests that damage crops. A new study that includes data from Kellogg Biological Station LTER (KBS LTER) found that natural pest suppression gains a big boost when agricultural landscapes are patchy and include a high… Read more »
Seeing the forest for the shrubs in Southern Appalachia
As ecosystems respond to human activity, what organisms will emerge as new trailblazers, shaping the diversity and resilience of these changing environments? And how can land managers identify these species early on to better prepare for the future? Forests of southern Appalachia have a history fraught with human activity. Hardy and towering, American chestnut and… Read more »
LTER at American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting 2020
Like everything else in 2020, the Fall Meeting of the America Geophysical Union (AGU) will be different this year. Talks, posters, town halls, lectures, exhibits and mixers will all be available online and the meeting timeline has been extended to encompass nearly three weeks in early December. Running from December 1-17, the 2020 meeting offers… Read more »
Presenting at an upcoming meeting?
Will you be attending an upcoming scientific meeting? Want your colleagues to know when and where you are presenting? Please fill out the form below and the LTER Network Office will compile and share a list of all the LTER presentations at the Ecological Society of America Annual Meeting, the American Geophysical Union Annual Fall… Read more »
Stop giving early and late Arctic seasons the ‘cold shoulder’, say LTER scientists
Climate change is hitting Arctic ecosystems hard – permafrost is rapidly thawing, releasing previously-frozen organic matter into the surrounding environment. Knowing not only how, but when, dissolved organic matter (DOM) and other nutrient concentrations are changing is important for predicting effects of climate change, but the picture is currently incomplete. A new paper from Arctic… Read more »