ASM Reports

“Even in problems that we think we we have it all figured out when we try to do something different we can be surprised.”

Luis Amaral, a native of Portugal, is a Professor of Medicine, Chemical, and Biological Engineering at the Amaral Lab of Complex Systems and Systems Biology at Northwestern University. His research aims to address some of the most pressing challenges facing human societies and the world’s ecosystems. He recently proposed the development of cartographic methods to allow important biological information to be collected at a scale of interest to the researcher, much like Google Maps allows travelers to determine the best route to their destination based on hotels, gas stations, and so on, in the immediate vicinity.

Henry Gholz, the former program officer for the Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) Program at the National Science Foundation (NSF) was honored with a standing ovation in a brief ceremony during the 2012 LTER All Scientists Meeting in Estes Park, Colorado. As program officer, Gholz, who is currently the Program Director in charge of the Ecosystems Cluster in the Division of Environmental Biology at NSF, presided over the program during LTER’s “Decade of Synthesis,” from 2001 to 2010.  He earned the respect and appreciation of the LTER community by his diligent efforts to raise the profile of LTER and to emphasize the importance of long-term studies.

The 2012 LTER ASM included a hilarious session involving “Lightning Round” plenary presentations, in which sites were allowed a maximum of two minutes to introduce their site science. The manner and form of presentation was entirely up to the sites to decide. Audience members were encouraged to shoo off the presenters as soon as their time was up—with no exceptions.

“Tipping points are common right across natural systems; do they also occur in social-ecological systems?”

J. Stephen Lansing is Anthropology and Ecology & Evolutionary Biology Professor, University of Arizona; Professor at the Santa Fe Institute; and director of Yayasan Somia Pretiwi, an Indonesian foundation promoting collaborative research on environmental problems in the tropics.

The 2012 LTER All Scientists Meeting (ASM) featured many of the things that we have come to expect every three years: A lovely setting at the YMCA of the Rockies, thought-provoking plenary speakers, and hundreds of posters illustrating the best of LTER research. However, during two working groups and two meetings this year, ASM participants discussed a topic seldom considered at previous ASMs--LTER science communication.

For a number of years, the research community had been calling for the creation of a network similar to the Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) Network, but focused specifically on agro-ecosystems.  In early 2012, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Agricultural Research Service (ARS) announced that it was establishing a Long Term Agro-ecosystem Research (LTAR) network from among its existing experimental watersheds and rangelands nationwide to address large-scale, multi-year research, environmental management testing and technology transfer related to the nation's agricultural ecosystems.

In September 2012, we participated in the 2012 All Scientists Meeting (ASM) of the Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) Network in Estes Park, Colorado, to make the case for integrating more anthropologists into the study of ecosystems. During the ASM’s initial plenary, the presence of “embedded” anthropologists was announced to all, and we were invited to stand and identify ourselves for the audience.  From then on we spent several days immersing ourselves in the activities of the LTER network and engaging with its researchers, a group previously unknown to many of us. We worked to overcome apprehensions (“why are anthropologists studying us?”), identify areas where our expertise might be useful (“what can anthropologists contribute to ecological research?”), and left with some ideas about the opportunities and challenges for integrating anthropologists into the LTER network. 

The EcoTrends project has been busy for the past several months reaching out to the scientific, technical, and education communities, supporting new science initiatives, and completing the products

The LTER Information Management Committee (IMC) conducted its annual meeting on September 13, 2009, during the Annual Scientists Meeting at Estes Park, CO.

One of the highlights of the All Scientists Meeting was Bill Clark's plenary talk entitled "Integrating Science and Society." Clark emphasized the great urgency, but also the tremendous opportunity