Last September, the LTER Executive Board requested proposals for working groups to expand on ideas generated at the 2006 All Scientists Meeting (ASM) in Estes Park, CO. The purpose of this request was to encourage further development of new cross-site projects and research initiatives. The Executive Board requested short proposals for up to $10,000 each whose focus was on specific products (publications, proposals, designs for cross-site experiments, development of software tools, creation of valued-added databases, etc).
The LTER Network Office and the LTER Planning Grant provided funds to support working groups to develop these products.
Thirty-five proposals were received and distributed to the Executive Board for review. The principal criterion for success was the degree to which the proposed activities advanced the goals of the LTER program, particularly with regard to the development of syntheses, cross-site and network-wide research. Funding was available for 21 of the 35 proposals; a list of the funded proposals and the principal investigators is given below.
- Peters: Trends in Long Term Ecological Data Working Group
- Cavender-Bares: Linking phylogenetic history, plant traits, and environmental gradients to understand community organization at local and continental scales
- Shah/Fargione: Effects of N-fixing plants on diversity and species interactions
- Rusak/Gragson/Foster: Interactions between ecosystem function and human behavior: paleoecological and socioeconomic dynamics of altered ecosystems
- Shah/Huryn: Metabolic Theory of Ecology and stream ecosystems
- Henebry: Phenology across LTER
- Schmidt: Catalyzing cross-site comparisons of microbial diversity and function
- Sheldon/Henshaw/ Ramsey: Workshop to define quality management standards for data completeness in derived data products
- Caldwell: Polyphenols across the LTER: assessing fractions, forms and functions
- Christian/Johnson/ Waide: Characterizing the nature of the LTER network
- Swinton: Ecosystem Services from Working Lands: Cross-site LTER Research
- Valentine, et al: Land-use change and influences to LTER sites
- Porter: Exploring the effect of scale-dependent processes on ecological systems using networked sensors
- Bestelmeyer: Collaborative Research on Desertification between the Jornada Basin and Mongolian LTERs
- Chapin/Carpenter/ Kinzing: Status and Trends of ecosystem services: A Cross-Site comparison of LTER Sites
- Kaplan, et al: Grasslands Data Integration of aboveground net primary productivity across sites and time
- Briggs/Knapp: Patterns and Consequences of Shrub Encroachment across North America
- Boone/Grove: Ecology and Environmental Justice Research across the LTER Network: long-term and multi-scale understandings of past, present, and future
- Kominoski, et al: The influence of changes in terrestrial plant community structure on aquatic ecosystem function across the LTER network.
- Stapp: Toward a synthesis of LTER studies of small mammal populations and communities in arid and semiarid ecosystems
- Swallow/Schnier: Dynamic amenity-based migration, land-use modeling and experimental market ecology: synthesizing the LTER Network with Social Science
Reports from each of these working groups will be posted on the LTER Intranet page (http://intranet.lternet.edu) and abbreviated versions will be published in future editions of the newsletter. Congratulations to the successful principal investigators.