The LTER Network has grown from a handful of independent sites to a true network with cross-site experiments, synthetic science, coordinated data management, and standard community practices. LTER community members managed a great deal of that growth, with modest financial support from the LTER Network Office in the form of working group funds. The record of past working groups is – in many ways – a record of the focus and priorities of the LTER Network through time.

Working Group Title Principal Investigator Type Award Year Final Report
Integrating above-and belowground community data to understand ecosystem temporal dynamics and responses to global change Ashley Bulseco, Smriti Pehim Limbu, Abigail Borgmeier, L. McKinley Nevins, Francis Andrea Chaves Rodriguez , 2025
Temporal variation in taxonomic and functional diversity and nutrient cycling of consumers across aquatic ecosystems and LTER sites Shalanda Grier, Lauren Enright, Camille Magneville, Mackenzie White , 2025
Life after death: how legacies of dead foundation species influence ecological processes across marine and terrestrial ecosystems Kai Kopecky, Katherine Suding, Ty Tuff , 2025
Consumer Absence Generates Ecological Dissimilarity (CAGED) Jamie McDevitt-Irwin, Kelly Speare, Sally Koerner , 2024
Assessing the resilience of productivity to climate variability across management and climate gradients David Hoover, Olivia Hajek , 2024
Fire and Aridland Streams Tamara Harms, Associate Professor, Department of Biology & Wildlife and Institute of Arctic Biology, University of Alaska Fairbanks , 2023
Selection across scales José Waterton (KBS), Jenn Lau (KBS), Ken Whitney (SEV), Nancy Emery (NWT) , 2023
Soil phosphorus control of carbon and nitrogen Craig See, Postdoctoral Scientist, Northern Arizona University, Ellery Vaughan, Postdoctoral Scientist, Northern Arizona University, Ruth Yanai, Professor, SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry , 2023
Producers, Consumers and Disturbance Pierre Marrec, Postdoctoral Fellow, Graduate School of Oceanography, University of Rhode Island, Grace Wilkinson, Assistant Professor, University of Wisconsin , 2023
Pelagic community structure Russell R Hopcroft, Professor, University of Alaska Fairbanks, rrhopcroft@alaska.edu, Mark Ohman, Professor, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Heidi Sosik, Senior Scientist, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Oscar Schofield, Professor, Rutgers University , 2023
The Flux Gradient Project Sparkle L. Malone, Assistant Professor, Yale University, Jackie H. Matthes, Senior Scientist, Harvard University , 2023
Marine consumer nutrient dynamics Mackenzie White, Graduate Student, FIU, Bradley Strickland, Postdoctoral Research Associate, VIMS, Jennifer Rehage, Associate Professor, FIU, Deron Burkepile, Professor, UC Santa Barbara, , 2023
Identifying environmental drivers of plant reproduction across LTER sites Jalene LaMontagne, DePaul University, Elizabeth Crone, Tufts University, Miranda Redmond, Colorado State University , 2021
Ecosystem transitions: increased variability and regime shifts Cristina Portales-Reyes, University of Georgia, Y. Anny Chung, University of Georgia , 2021
A global synthesis of multi-year drought effects on terrestrial ecosystems Kate Wilkins, Colorado State University, Osvaldo Sala, Peter Wilfahrt, University of Bayreuth, Laureano Gherardi, Melinda Smith 2020
From poles to tropics: A multi-biome synthesis investigating the controls on river Si exports Joanna Carey, Babson College, KathiJo Jankowski, US Geological Survey , 2020
Ecological Metagenome-derived Reference Genomes and Traits (EMERGENT) Jeff Blanchard, UMass Amherst/HFR, Janet Jansson, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Jorge Rodrigues, UC Davis, Lee Stanish, NEON, Margaret O’Brien, UC Santa Barbara, Jason McDermott, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory 2020
Synthesizing population and community synchrony to understand drivers of ecological stability across LTER sites Lauren Hallett, Daniel Reuman, Katharine Suding , 2017
Scaling-Up Productivity Responses to Changes in Biodiversity Forest Isbell, Jane M. Cowles, Laura Dee , 2017
Advancing soil organic matter research: Synthesizing multi-scale observations, manipulations & models Will Wieder, Kate Lajtha , 2017
Global Patterns in Stream Energy and Nutrient Cycling Adam Wymore|Sujay Kaushal , 2016
A synthesis to identify how metacommunity dynamics mediate community responses to disturbance across the ecosystems represented in the LTER network Eric Sokol, Christopher Swan, Nathan Wisnoski , 2016
Integrating plant community and ecosystem responses to chronic global change drivers Kimberly Komatsu|Meghan L. Avolio|Kevin R. Wilcox , 2016
Leveraging PASTA and EML-based Workflow Tools for LTER Data Synthesis 2012 Final Report (PDF)
Atmospheric correction to LTER Landsat catalog Kyle Cavanaugh 2012 Final Report (PDF)
Cross site analysis and synthesis of arts and humanities engagement within LTER 2012 Final Report (PDF)
A synthesis of LTER community data to test metacommunity theory under different ecological conditions Eric Sokol 2012 Final Report (PDF)
Cross site analysis and synthesis of the role of vegetation, sediment supply, sea level rise and storminess on intertidal coastal geomorphology 2012 Final Report (PDF)
Beyond the Numbers: Supporting an increasingly diverse LTER community 2012 Final Report (PDF)
Linking aquatic and soil organic matter across ecosystems through characterization of optical properties 2012 Final Report (PDF)
Coastal Wetland Ecology and Geomorphology 2012 Final Report (PDF)
Training workshop: Software tools and strategies for managing sensor networks 2012
Exploring the Seasonal Synchrony of Catchment Nitrogen Dynamics: The Search for a Unifying Theoretical Framework 2012 Final Report (PDF)
Enhancement of the LTER Controlled Vocabulary to Support Data Synthesis 2012 Final Report (PDF)
Synthesis of stream ecosystem responses to nutrient enrichment at multiple trophic levels , 2012 Final Report (PDF)
Sensitivity of ecosystem properties to winter climate anomalies 2012 Final Report (PDF)
The Ecosystem Sensitivity to Rainfall Experiment (EcoSeRE): Design and Synthesis 2012 Final Report (PDF)
Responses of soft sediment coastal ecosystems to sea level rise and coastal squeeze in the LTER Network 2012 Final Report (PDF)
A guide to successful graduate student socio-ecological research: Insights from the Long Term Ecological Research Network 2012 Final Report (PDF)
Mechanisms of convergence and divergence: understanding the variability of plant community responses to multiple resource manipulations 2012 Final Report (PDF)
Urban aquatic ecosystems: a synthesis working group proposal 2012 Final Report (PDF)
Soil Biogeochemistry: Synthesis of Past Data and Development of Protocols for a New Long-Term, Network-Wide Data Stream 2012 Final Report (PDF)
Identifying Alternative Indicators for the Detection of Abrupt Transitions in Ecosystems: a Consideration of Time Scale and Community Parameters 2012 Final Report (PDF)
Training working group: Climate and streamflow seasonal trend analysis at LTER sites 2012 Final Report (PDF)
2013 LTER Training Workshop Proposal – Remote Data Acquisition 2012 Final Report (PDF)
Training Workshop for Site Science Communicators 2012 Final Report (PDF)
Veg-DB Phase 2: Developing a cross-site system to improve development and access to synthetic vegetation databases 2012 Final Report (PDF)
Managing sensor networks and data: Best practices for LTER 2012 Final Report (PDF)
Establishing High Quality Digital Collections of LTER Educational Resources 2012
GeoNIS Implementation with PASTA 2012