From all comments received by the Network Office, the 2015 Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) All Scientists Meeting (ASM) in Estes Park, Colorado, was a complete success!
The meeting was held from August 30 through the evening of September 2. The Conference was organized around the theme: "From Long-Term Data to Understanding: Toward a Predictive Ecology". Almost 600 people attended the meeting. There were over 300 poster presentations and more than 75 formal and ad-hoc working group meetings. Drs. James Olds, Diana Wall, Knute Nadelhoffer and Ned Gardener provided excellent plenary presentations to highlight the meeting.
Meeting attendees, perhaps without realizing it, created the content of the meeting itself by entering their poster abstracts, organizing and entering their working group information and even uploading pictures of their experiences at the meeting. You can peruse the meeting links at the top of the page for what happened here in 2015.
The 2015 ASM was held at the YMCA of the Rockies in Estes Park, CO, a location selected by the LTER Science Council based on a survey of previous participants that showed a majority favoring a return to Estes Park. Selection of meeting dates was also influenced by preferences expressed in the survey and to reduce conflicts with major holidays and other meetings.
Although the 2015 meeting was one day shorter than the 2012 meeting, it was designed to efficiently use the time without reducing meeting content, particularly allowing time for the many working groups and related meetings that lead to future LTER research activities, publications, databases, and other products. Even with significantly reduced funding for the 2015 meeting compared to years past, the meeting was well attended and a lot of work was done, future collaborations organized, and friends made.
Videos of plenary talksAs the videos for the ASM plenary talks are processed, they will appear in the LTER ASM 2015 media catalog for viewing. Several of the early talks were plagued by audio issues so it may take several weeks to reconstruct those. You can access the catalog at http://mtsms.unm.edu/Mediasite/Catalog/Full/49a168d1b525405caeafb69623cabe7421.