Following on the heels of the 98th annual meeting of the Ecological Society of America, the International Association for Ecology met in conjunction with the British Ecological Society's centennial celebration in London and the Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) Network was well represented in the “programme.”
Leading the way was Alan Covich, the chair of INTECOL, who gave a talk on “Evaluating Wetland Ecosystem Services Sustained by High Biodiversity in the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, Georgia, USA Under Climate-Driven Drought”. From the Central Arizona-Phoenix LTER, Dan Childers and Jianguo Wu presented talks on “Expanding from Urban Ecology into Urban Sustainability, and from Research to Action” and “The state-of-the-science in urban ecology and sustainability: A landscape perspective,” respectively, while Nancy Grimm gave a plenary talk on “Urban socio-techno-ecological systems: prospects for resilient urban water systems.”
David Tilman (Cedar Creek LTER) gave a plenary address titled “The Biodiversity versus agriculture dilemma,“ and in a session on Evolutionary Ecology, a talk titled “Biodiversity: From Evolutionary Origins to Ecosystem Functioning.” In a session on international perspectives from long term research on ecosystem carbon budgets, Kate Lajtha presented a talk on “What playing in DIRT can tell us about controls on soil carbon sequestration” (see separate story in this issue), and at a different session Patrick Bergeron gave a talk on “Impact of heritable traits on population growth.”
Kristen Vanderbuilt chaired two sessions related to ILTER and also spoke on LTER data use during a DataONE workshop on “Managing data for effective use and re-use. “Other LTER scientists including Mark Williams were involved in various workshops and symposia and many International LTER members were present as well.
John Vande Castle from the LTER Network Office (LNO) set up and managed the LTER traveling exhibit at the conference. Bob Waide (LNO) and LTER Chair Scott Collins (Sevilleta LTER) also could often be seen at the LTER booth. All in all it was a very successful representation of LTER.
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