Each spring a community of LTER scientists and educators gathers at the National Science Foundation (NSF) in Arlington, VA, to share exciting results from LTER's research and synthesis activities with federal agency peers and policy makers. The theme of each annual symposium is chosen to reflect new advances in long-term ecological research.
This year's symposium took place on March 8, 2007. The forum focused on understanding the interactions between society and ecological change, and how they are linked to sustainability of Earth's ecosystems. The presentations highlighted the concepts and the details of how LTER is developing an overarching approach to socio-ecology characterized by feedback loops between the ecological and the social components of the Earth's ecosystems.
The symposium was organized jointly by Steve Carpenter (North Temperate Lakes LTER, Wisconsin), Morgan Grove (Baltimore Ecosystem Study LTER, Maryland), and Chuck Hopkinson (Plum Island Ecosystem LTER, Massachusetts), and facilitated by Henry Gholz (LTER Program Director) and Jim Collins (Assistant Director for Biological Sciences) at NSF.
The following is a summary of the presentations.
- Henry Gholz (NSF Program Director for LTER) and James P. Collins (Assistant Director for Biological Sciences): Introductory remarks provide background on the history, goals, present status and future of the LTER Network.
- Scott Collins (Sevilleta LTER, New Mexico): "Integrated Science for Society and Environment: A Mechanistic Approach to Socio-ecological Research" introduces new network research plan that LTER is developing and develops the concepts underlying this plan.
- Steward Pickett (Baltimore Ecosystem Study LTER, Maryland): "Social-ecological Change in Urban Ecosystems" centers on how feedback loops in socio-ecological systems can include policy and human connections explicit in the real world, using the example of a small urban watershed.
- Terry Chapin (Bonanza Creek LTER, Alaska): "Wildfires: The Intersection of Changes in Climate, Policy, and Culture in Alaska's Boreal Forest" illustrates how human responses to fire on the landscape have been complicated by cultural shifts leading to the establishment of stationary settlements.
- Steve Polasky (Cedar Creek LTER, Minnesota): "Bioeconomics of Biofuels: Grassland Restoration and Renewable Energy" shows how the ecological results from LTER sites have national implications for human choices for energy from biofuels.
- Dan Reed (Santa Barbara Coastal LTER, California): "Social-Ecological Interactions in Coastal Marine Ecosystems" demonstrates the broad range of services that come from coastal marine ecosystems with the specific example of giant kelp ecosystems, encompassing the basic ecology to the human portions of the system.
- David Foster (Harvard Forest LTER, Massachusetts): "Landscapes in Time: Millennial Socio-ecological Dynamics of the Northeastern U.S." illustrates the importance of history in the changing ecosystem and human structures of the northeast forests, pointing out that we often have not been able to predict human behavior on the landscape.
- Debra Peters (Jornada Basin LTER, New Mexico): "Synthesis: Understanding Social-Ecological Systems Through a Network of Sites" pulls all these ideas and examples together to reveal the generalities of the LTER approach and the openness that LTER employs in interacting with other networks.
The LTER network comprises 26 field sites located primarily in the United States, but with a geographic span from the Arctic and Antarctic to the tropics. The sites represent Earth's major ecosystems, and include deserts, grasslands, forests, tundra, urban areas, agricultural systems, freshwater lakes, coastal estuaries and salt marshes, coral reefs and coastal ocean zones.