Scientific Reports

Traveling west along the Gaviota coast on the afternoon of May 19, 2015, Santa Barbara Coastal (SBC) Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) scientists Mark Page a

Ecosystem services are the benefits that we receive from nature every day.

Humans have long relied on nutrient fertilizers to improve crop yields and garden bounties.

Thirty years ago, researchers at the North Temperate Lakes (NTL) Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) site began to document the exploding population of rusty crayfish in Sparking Lake in northern Wisconsin. Four years ago, they wrapped up a multi-year effort to dramatically reduce the presence of the destructive invasive species.

Scientists expect the impact of climate change to be amplified in Polar regions because of the sensitivity of the cryosphere to the phase change of ice to liquid water. For example, in the Artic climate change is manifest in the decreasing extent of summer sea ice and widespread thawing of permafrost.

A new project funded through the National Science Foundation (NSF) Macrosystems Biology program is testing patterns and mechanisms of scaling across North America and at an additional site in Australia. The SCALER—or Scale, Consumers And Lotic Ecosystem Rates—project is an ambitious collaborative research project that addresses one of the biggest questions in ecology: Can measurements and the results of experiments carried out at small spatial scales be applied to scales relevant to landscape function and ecosystem management?  SCALER experiments are currently being conducted at five Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) sites across the country--at Coweeta (CWT), Luquillo (LUQ), Konza (KNZ), Toolik (ARC) and Bonanza Creek (BNZ) LTER sites--and Litchfield National Park in northern Australia near Charles Darwin University.

Human activities such as fossil fuel burning and intensive agriculture have raised atmospheric nitrogen deposition to 10 times or more above natural background levels in highly polluted regions. The Harvard Forest Nitrogen Saturation Experiment began in 1988 to examine ecosystem sensitivity, resilience, and resistance to long-term nitrogen enrichment. Sustained nitrogen enrichment over more than two decades has promoted ecosystem carbon storage, with soils accumulating as much or more carbon as trees and providing the main sink for nitrogen inputs. Nitrogen enrichment has also altered the structure and function of the soil microbial community which is responsible for key nutrient cycling processes.

The cycling of carbon is an important aspect of the function of terrestrial (land-based) and aquatic (water-based) ecosystems across the Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) network.  Therefore the transport of carbon (C) is a critical component of ecosystem carbon accounting from terrestrial to aquatic ecosystems. The chemical properties of the major pools of organic carbon dissolved in water and stored in soils can play a key role in determining the flow of carbon from the landscape and the key processes controlling carbon cycling.   

Climate variability is known to affect the structure and productivity of marine ecosystems (McGowan et al., 1998).  Top marine predators may respond to this variation through changes in their

The 100th anniversary of the first expeditions to reach the South Pole made the 2011-2012 field season an exciting time to be in Antarctica.   One of the most interesting observations is how different experiences in the McMurdo Dry Valleys are now from those of the Antarctic explorers 100 years ago.