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![Figure][1] Australia's long-term ecological research projects are at risk. PHOTO: THPSTOCK/ISTOCKPHOTO Australia will lose its integrated long-term ecological research (LTER) network at the end of 2017 ([ 1 ][2]). The network comprises more than 1100 long-term field plots within temperate forests, rainforests, alpine grasslands, heathlands, deserts, and savannas, with an unparalleled temporal depth in biodiversity data. Its many achievements includ e Australia's first published trend data for key ecosystems ([ 2 ][3]) and a suite of IUCN ecosystem risk assessments ([ 3 ][4]). Long-term ecological data are critical for quantifying environmental and biodiversity change and identifying its causes. LTER is especially important in Australia because many of the country's ecosystems are subject to frequent climatic extremes. Continuity of long-term research and monitoring, and broader use of existing time series data by science and policy communities, are crucial for measuring impacts of current unprecedented global environmental change and reliably predicting future impacts. Long-term research and monitoring is also essential to understanding relationships between the economy, ecosystems, and risks to human well-being ([ 4 ][5]). The loss of Australia's LTER network will substantially diminish resource managers' ability to judge the effectiveness of management interventions on which billions of dollars are spent annually (such as vegetation restoration and invasive species control). Ending the network will also jeopardize sustainability assessments of resource-based industries such as agriculture and forestry. Moreover, Australia's capacity to participate effectively in global initiatives such as the International LTER will be impaired. The LTER network is part of the Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network (TERN), funded by Australia's government ([ 5 ][6]). TERN's inclusion of existing LTER capability provided a template that others in Europe, China, and South Africa have followed. Discontinuing the LTER network within TERN will therefore undermine global cohesion in environmental research and monitoring. At a time when the United States is increasing funding for its LTERs by US$5.6M annually ([ 6 ][7]), and other nations are rapidly building substantial LTER capacity, terminating Australia's LTER network is totally out of step with international trends and national imperatives. To prevent the collapse of the LTER network and prevent the resulting irreversible impacts of breaking current time-series, urgent and direct investment by the Australian government is crucial. [www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/357/6351/557-a/DC1][8] Full author list 1. [↵][9]TERN, Quarterly Newsletter, Issue 16 (2017); [www.ozflux.org.au/publications/newsletter/SuperSitesOzFluxCZONewsletter\_Issue16\_July2017.pdf][10]. 2. [↵][11]1. D. B. Lindenmayer, 2. E. Burns, 3. N. Thurgate, 4. A. Lowe , Eds., Biodiversity and Environmental Change: Monitoring, Challenges and Direction (CSIRO Publishing, Melbourne, Australia, 2014). 3. [↵][12]1. D. A. Keith , Austral. Ecol. 40, 337 (2015). [OpenUrl][13] 4. [↵][14]1. D. B. Lindenmayer et al ., Austral. Ecol. 40, 213 (2015). [OpenUrl][15] 5. [↵][16]Long Term Ecological Research Network ([www.ltern.org.au][17]). 6. [↵][18]Nature 543, 469 (2017). [OpenUrl][19] [1]: pending:yes [2]: #ref-1 [3]: #ref-2 [4]: #ref-3 [5]: #ref-4 [6]: #ref-5 [7]: #ref-6 [8]: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/357/6351/557-a/DC1 [9]: #xref-ref-1-1 View reference 1 in text [10]: http://www.ozflux.org.au/publications/newsletter/SuperSitesOzFluxCZONewsletter_Issue16_July2017.pdf [11]: #xref-ref-2-1 View reference 2 in text [12]: #xref-ref-3-1 View reference 3 in text [13]: {openurl}?query=rft.jtitle%253DAustral.%2BEcol.%26rft.volume%253D40%26rft.spage%253D337%26rft.genre%253Darticle%26rft_val_fmt%253Dinfo%253Aofi%252Ffmt%253Akev%253Amtx%253Ajournal%26ctx_ver%253DZ39.88-2004%26url_ver%253DZ39.88-2004%26url_ctx_fmt%253Dinfo%253Aofi%252Ffmt%253Akev%253Amtx%253Actx [14]: #xref-ref-4-1 View reference 4 in text [15]: {openurl}?query=rft.jtitle%253DAustral.%2BEcol.%26rft.volume%253D40%26rft.spage%253D213%26rft.genre%253Darticle%26rft_val_fmt%253Dinfo%253Aofi%252Ffmt%253Akev%253Amtx%253Ajournal%26ctx_ver%253DZ39.88-2004%26url_ver%253DZ39.88-2004%26url_ctx_fmt%253Dinfo%253Aofi%252Ffmt%253Akev%253Amtx%253Actx [16]: #xref-ref-5-1 View reference 5 in text [17]: http://www.ltern.org.au [18]: #xref-ref-6-1 View reference 6 in text [19]: {openurl}?query=rft.jtitle%253DNature%26rft.volume%253D543%26rft.spage%253D469%26rft.genre%253Darticle%26rft_val_fmt%253Dinfo%253Aofi%252Ffmt%253Akev%253Amtx%253Ajournal%26ctx_ver%253DZ39.88-2004%26url_ver%253DZ39.88-2004%26url_ctx_fmt%253Dinfo%253Aofi%252Ffmt%253Akev%253Amtx%253Actx

From November 2004,the US Long Term Ecological Research(LTER) network has been funded by the National Science Foundation(NSF) to conduct a strategic planning process for synthesis and network-level research for the coming decade(s).This planning activity aims at developing a new LTER network-level science plan and is organized and driven by a Science Task Force,seven Network Science Working Groups and a series of planning meetings.In the process of drawing up and refining the science plan,the planning activities caused some significant scientific outcomes,such as LTER science overarching question,conceptual framework,five basic questions,Integrated Science for Society and the Environment(ISSE) initiative,LTER Cyberinfrastructure Strategic Plan and Education and Outreach Strategic Plan.It's a significant planning to tell LTER how to achieve network-level synthesis science,the future of LTER so it would contribute to the development of LTER network and long term ecological research,and provide insights for the planning and development of other LTER network,Chinese Ecosystem Research Network(CERN) for example.

Studies conducted at sites across ecological research networks usually strive to scale their results to larger areas, trying to reach conclusions that are valid throughout larger enclosing regions. Network representativeness and constituency can show how well conditions at sampling locations represent conditions also found elsewhere and can be used to help scale-up results over larger regions. Multivariate statistical methods have been used to design networks and select sites that optimize regional representation, thereby maximizing the value of datasets and research. However, in networks created from already established sites, an immediate challenge is to understand how well existing sites represent the range of environments in the whole area of interest. We performed an analysis to show how well sites in the USDA Long-Term Agroecosystem Research (LTAR) Network represent all agricultural working lands within the conterminous United States (CONUS). Our analysis of 18 LTAR sites, based on 15 climatic and edaphic characteristics, produced maps of representativeness and constituency. Representativeness of the LTAR sites was quantified through an exhaustive pairwise Euclidean distance calculation in multivariate space, between the locations of experiments within each LTAR site and every 1 km cell across the CONUS. Network representativeness is from the perspective of all CONUS locations, but we also considered the perspective from each LTAR site. For every LTAR site, we identified the region that is best represented by that particular site—its constituency—as the set of 1 km grid locations best represented by the environmental drivers at that particular LTAR site. Representativeness shows how well the combination of characteristics at each CONUS location was represented by the LTAR sites’ environments, while constituency shows which LTAR site was the closest match for each location. LTAR representativeness was good across most of the CONUS. Representativeness for croplands was higher than for grazinglands, probably because croplands have more specific environmental criteria. Constituencies resemble ecoregions but have their environmental conditions “centered” on those at particular existing LTAR sites. Constituency of LTAR sites can be used to prioritize the locations of experimental research at or even within particular sites, or to identify the extents that can likely be included when generalizing knowledge across larger regions of the CONUS. Sites with a large constituency have generalist environments, while those with smaller constituency areas have more specialized environmental combinations. These “specialist” sites are the best representatives for smaller, more unusual areas. The potential of sharing complementary sites from the Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) Network and the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) to boost representativeness was also explored. LTAR network representativeness would benefit from borrowing several NEON sites and the Sevilleta LTER site. Later network additions must include such specialist sites that are targeted to represent unique missing environments. While this analysis exhaustively considered principal environmental characteristics related to production on working lands, we did not consider the focal agronomic systems under study, or their socio-economic context.

The International Long-Term Ecological Research (ILTER) network is currently unmatched by other global networks in its ability to coordinate and collaborate on long-term ecological research and monitoring at a planetary scale. This offers an ideal research, information, and infrastructural platform for the Earth Stewardship initiative. However, to achieve an effective synergy between ILTER and Earth Stewardship it is critical to overcome problematic geographical and conceptual gaps in ILTER Research. To quantify these gaps we produced a new database of scholarly and grey literature generated at long-term ecological or socio-ecological research (LTER) sites worldwide. We assessed: (1) the geographical origin of LTER researchers; (2) the geographical regions where these researchers conduct their studies; (3) which thematic areas are investigated in LTER research, and to what extent do they include concepts associated with Earth Stewardship; (4) in which venues are LTER research outputs published. Regarding the production of knowledge at ILTER, we found a marked Northern Hemispherism: > 90 % of the ILTER publications are generated by researchers from the Northern Hemisphere. Furthermore, 89 % of ILTER publications are generated by researchers associated with LTER networks in the North Temperate region (23° N – 66° N). Regarding conceptual gaps, 99 % of all ILTER publications in the arts and the humanities are generated by researchers working in the South Temperate region (23°N – 66°N), especially Chile. Additionally, in Southern Hemisphere LTER networks research themes associated with Earth Stewardship were the most represented. Our concise analysis aims to call attention to the fact that opportunities exist for greater collaboration and complementarity in research across the ILTER Network. The southern regions can significantly add to the integration of social, ethical, and artistic dimensions to transdisciplinary socio-ecological research at ILTER, providing an intercultural and participatory foundation for Earth Stewardship.

Population dynamics play a central role in the historical and current development of fundamental and applied ecological science. The nascent culture of open data promises to increase the value of population dynamics studies to the field of ecology. However, synthesis of population data is constrained by the difficulty in identifying relevant datasets, by the heterogeneity of available data and by access to raw (as opposed to aggregated or derived) observations. To obviate these issues, we built a relational database, popler, and its R client, the library "popler". popler accommodates the vast majority of population data under a common structure, and without the need for aggregating raw observations. The "popler" R library is designed for users unfamiliar with the structure of the database and with the SQL language. This R library allows users to identify, download, explore and cite datasets salient to their needs. We implemented popler as a PostgreSQL instance, where we stored population data originated by the United States Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) Network. Our focus on the US LTER data aims to leverage the potential of this vast open data resource. The database currently contains 305 datasets from 25 LTER sites. popler is designed to accommodate automatic updates of existing datasets, and to accommodate additional datasets from LTER as well as non‐LTER studies. The combination of the online database and the R library "popler" is a resource for data synthesis efforts in population ecology. The common structure of popler simplifies comparative analyses, and the availability of raw data confers flexibility in data analysis. The "popler" R library maximizes these opportunities by providing a user‐friendly interface to the online database.

Ecosystems across the United States are changing in complex and surprising ways. Ongoing demand for critical ecosystem services requires an understanding of the populations and communities in these ecosystems in the future. This paper represents a synthesis effort of the U.S. National Science Foundation‐funded Long‐Term Ecological Research (LTER) network addressing the core research area of “populations and communities.” The objective of this effort was to show the importance of long‐term data collection and experiments for addressing the hardest questions in scientific ecology that have significant implications for environmental policy and management. Each LTER site developed at least one compelling case study about what their site could look like in 50–100 yr as human and environmental drivers influencing specific ecosystems change. As the case studies were prepared, five themes emerged, and the studies were grouped into papers in this LTER Futures Special Feature addressing state change, connectivity, resilience, time lags, and cascading effects. This paper addresses the “connectivity” theme and has examples from the Phoenix (urban), Niwot Ridge (alpine tundra), McMurdo Dry Valleys (polar desert), Plum Island (coastal), Santa Barbara Coastal (coastal), and Jornada (arid grassland and shrubland) sites. Connectivity has multiple dimensions, ranging from multi‐scalar interactions in space to complex interactions over time that govern the transport of materials and the distribution and movement of organisms. The case studies presented here range widely, showing how land‐use legacies interact with climate to alter the structure and function of arid ecosystems and flows of resources and organisms in Antarctic polar desert, alpine, urban, and coastal marine ecosystems. Long‐term ecological research demonstrates that connectivity can, in some circumstances, sustain valuable ecosystem functions, such as the persistence of foundation species and their associated biodiversity or, it can be an agent of state change, as when it increases wind and water erosion. Increased connectivity due to warming can also lead to species range expansions or contractions and the introduction of undesirable species. Continued long‐term studies are essential for addressing the complexities of connectivity. The diversity of ecosystems within the LTER network is a strong platform for these studies.

Ecosystems are changing in complex and unpredictable ways, and analysis of these changes is facilitated by coordinated, long‐term research. Meeting diverse societal needs requires an understanding of what populations and communities will be dominant in 20, 50, and 100 yr. This paper is a product of a synthesis effort of the U.S. National Science Foundation funded Long‐Term Ecological Research (LTER) network addressing the LTER core research area of populations and communities. This analysis revealed that each LTER site had at least one compelling story about what their site would look like in 50 or 100 yr. As the stories were prepared, themes emerged, and the stories were grouped into papers along five themes for this special issue: state change, connectivity, resilience, time lags, and cascading effects. This paper addresses the resilience theme and includes stories from the Baltimore (urban), Hubbard Brook (northern hardwood forest), Andrews (temperate rain forest), Moorea (coral reef), Cedar Creek (grassland), and North Temperate Lakes (lakes) sites. The concept of resilience (the capacity of a system to maintain structure and processes in the face of disturbance) is an old topic that has seen a resurgence of interest as the nature and extent of global environmental change have intensified. The stories we present here show the power of long‐term manipulation experiments (Cedar Creek), the value of long‐term monitoring of forests in both natural (Andrews, Hubbard Brook) and urban settings (Baltimore), and insights that can be gained from modeling and/or experimental approaches paired with long‐term observations (North Temperate Lakes, Moorea). Three main conclusions emerge from the analysis: (1) Resilience research has matured over the past 40 yr of the LTER program; (2) there are many examples of high resilience among the ecosystems in the LTER network; (3) there are also many warning signs of declining resilience of the ecosystems we study. These stories highlight the need for long‐term studies to address this complex topic and show how the diversity of sites within the LTER network facilitates the emergence of overarching concepts about this important driver of ecosystem structure, function, services, and futures.

The network of sites with long-term ecological research (LTER) in Lithuania was initiated and organised by the Institute of Ecology of Vilnius University in 2004. Scientists from several research institutes and universities are engaged in implementing the scientific program of the network. The site-based long-term multidisciplinary ecological research has a central role in the network. The key research topics cover both abiotic and biotic components of ecosystems. Four sites have been designated for the LTER program in Lithuania: Lithuanian coastal area, Cepkeliai State Strict Nature Reserve, Kamanos State Strict Nature Reserve and Lake Drūksiai with adjacent wetlands. These sites are representative examples of ecosystems characteristic of different regions of Lithuania and have proper scientific background from earlier and ongoing multidisciplinary research. Cross-border sitebased ecological research has recently been initiated in LTER sites shared with Belarus and Russia. Certain research programs are i...

Calls for interdisciplinary approaches to environmental problem-solving are common across the biophysical and social sciences. Recently, some of these collaborations have incorporated the creative arts and humanities, including projects across the 24 sites of the US Long-term Ecological Research (LTER) network. A substantial body of artistic and written work has been produced by LTER-affiliated sites. However, there has been no systematic analysis of this work. We used a cross-site, social scientific analysis to understand the extent and nature of arts and humanities inquiry in the LTER network and to assess perceptions about the values and challenges associated with it. We found that 19 of the 24 LTER sites agree or strongly agree that arts and humanities inquiry is important and relevant for the sites. Perceived values of this work include its goodness in and of itself, as well as its ability to foster outreach and public involvement and to inspire creative thinking. Contrarily, participants identified funding, available labor, and available expertise as limiting factors in the growth of arts and humanities inquiry in the LTER network. Respondents highlighted themes relevant to the relationship between ecological science and ethics, including participants’ willingness to accept fostering empathy, an identified value of arts and humanities inquiry, as pertinent to LTER network goals and research on some level. This ethical potential of arts and humanities inquiry in the LTER network provides an opportunity to bridge ecological research with arts and humanities inquiry in ways that are meaningful for Earth stewardship.KeywordsEmpathyEthicsEcologyInterdisciplinaryIntrinsic valuePlace-based

The Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) Network served as a catalyst to promote cooperation among multi-national research programs and networks. The chapter describes the strategic planning process in the 1990s that led to the creation of the International Long Term Ecological Research (ILTER) Network, which expanded rapidly in the late-1990s with support of the National Science Foundation (NSF). Especially under the leadership of James Gosz, cooperative arrangements were made with countries worldwide and 23 LTER networks had formed by 2003. Many U.S. LTER scientists and information management specialists contributed to the expansion of the ILTER Network through site visits and workshops. After NSF scaled back its support, ILTER reorganized its governance structure and grew into a robust, self-sustaining network of networks. The chapter reviews examples of collaborations in research and information management. The ILTER Network today aims to become part of a global infrastructure to address continental and global socio-ecological problems through partnerships with other international networks. Concerns about climate change, biodiversity loss, and the scarcity of research sites producing long-term data led to the creation of the U.S. LTER Network and hence ILTER, and the legacies of data, information, and long-term measurements that have resulted are a critical contribution to resolving current global problems.

This paper aims to enrich the current understanding of data curation prevalent in e-Science by drawing on an ethnographic study of one of the longest-running efforts at long-term consistent data collection with open data sharing in an environment of interdisciplinary collaboration. In such a context we identify a set of salient characteristics of ecological research and data that shape the data stewardship approach of the Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) network. We describe the actual practices through which LTER information managers attend to the extended temporal scale of long-term research and data sets both through data care work and information infrastructure development. We discuss the issues of long-term and continuity that represent central challenges for data curation and stewardship. We argue for more efforts to be directed to understanding what is at stake with a long-term perspective and differing temporal scales as well as to studying actual practices of data curation and stewardship in order to provide more coherent understandings of e-Science solutions and technologies.

Ecosystems across the United States are changing in complex and unpredictable ways and analysis of these changes requires coordinated, long‐term research. This paper is a product of a synthesis effort of the U.S. National Science Foundation funded Long‐Term Ecological Research (LTER) network addressing the LTER core research area of “populations and communities.” This analysis revealed that each LTER site had at least one compelling “story” about what their site would look like in 50–100 yr. As the stories were prepared, themes emerged, and the stories were group into papers along five themes: state change, connectivity, resilience, time lags, and cascading effects. This paper addresses the cascading effects theme and includes stories from the Bonanza Creek (boreal), Kellogg Biological Station (agricultural and freshwater), Palmer (Antarctica), and Harvard Forest (temperate forest) LTER sites. We define cascading effects very broadly to include a wide array of unforeseen chains of events that result from a variety of actions or changes in a system. While climate change is having important direct effects on boreal forests, indirect effects mediated by fire activity—severity, size, and return interval—have large cascading effects over the long term. In northeastern temperate forests, legacies of human management and disturbance affect the composition of current forests, which creates a cascade of effects that interact with the climate‐facilitated invasion of an exotic pest. In Antarctica, declining sea ice creates a cascade of effects including declines in Adèlie and increases in Gentoo penguins, changes in phytoplankton, and consequent changes in zooplankton populations. An invasion of an exotic species of lady beetle is likely to have important future effects on pest control and conservation of native species in agricultural landscapes. New studies of zebra mussels, a well‐studied invader, have established links between climate, the heat tolerance of the mussels, and harmful algal blooms. Collectively, these stories highlight the need for long‐term studies to sort out the complexities of different types of ecological cascades. The diversity of sites within the LTER network facilitates the emergence of overarching concepts about trophic interactions as an important driver of ecosystem structure, function, services, and futures.

The Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) Network is a collection of 25 National Science Foundation-funded sites committed to long-term, place-based investigation of the natural world. While activities primarily focus on ecological research, arts and humanities inquiry emerged in 2002 and since then, a substantial body of creative work has been produced at LTER-affiliated sites. These art-humanities-science collaborations parallel a wider trend in universities and non-profits. However, there is little empirical work on the value and effectiveness of this work. After launching a survey in 2013 to assess the values and challenges associated with arts and humanities in the LTER Network (Goralnik et al. 2015), which identified empathy as a meaningful potential outcome of this creative work, we conducted a follow-up analysis to understand the following: the relevance of empathy in the LTER Network; the role of empathy in bridging arts, humanities, and science collaborations; and the capacity of empathy to connect wider audiences both to LTER science and to the natural world. Our research included phone interviews with representatives from 15 LTER sites and an audience perception survey at an LTER-hosted art show. We found that arts-humanities-science collaborations have great potential to catalyze relationships between scholars, the public, and the natural world; cultivate inspiration and empathy for the natural world; and spark awareness shifts that can enable pro-environmental behavior. Our research demonstrates the potential for art-humanities-science collaborations to facilitate conservation attitudes and action in the Network and beyond.

Ecosystems across the United States are changing in complex ways that are difficult to predict. Coordinated long‐term research and analysis are required to assess how these changes will affect a diverse array of ecosystem services. This paper is part of a series that is a product of a synthesis effort of the U.S. National Science Foundation’s Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) network. This effort revealed that each LTER site had at least one compelling scientific case study about “what their site would look like” in 50 or 100 yr. As the site results were prepared, themes emerged, and the case studies were grouped into separate papers along five themes: state change, connectivity, resilience, time lags, and cascading effects and compiled into this special issue. This paper addresses the time lags theme with five examples from diverse biomes including tundra (Arctic), coastal upwelling (California Current Ecosystem), montane forests (Coweeta), and Everglades freshwater and coastal wetlands (Florida Coastal Everglades) LTER sites. Its objective is to demonstrate the importance of different types of time lags, in different kinds of ecosystems, as drivers of ecosystem structure and function and how these can effectively be addressed with long‐term studies. The concept that slow, interactive, compounded changes can have dramatic effects on ecosystem structure, function, services, and future scenarios is apparent in many systems, but they are difficult to quantify and predict. The case studies presented here illustrate the expanding scope of thinking about time lags within the LTER network and beyond. Specifically, they examine what variables are best indicators of lagged changes in arctic tundra, how progressive ocean warming can have profound effects on zooplankton and phytoplankton in waters off the California coast, how a series of species changes over many decades can affect Eastern deciduous forests, and how infrequent, extreme cold spells and storms can have enduring effects on fish populations and wetland vegetation along the Southeast coast and the Gulf of Mexico. The case studies highlight the need for a diverse set of LTER (and other research networks) sites to sort out the multiple components of time lag effects in ecosystems.

The way we see ourselves and understand the world we live in guides and determines the types of solutions we are designing and implementing to deal with our global change problems. System thinking is helping us to recognize humanity as complex, self-organized, multi-level, and highly integrated socio-bio-physical entities that we refer to as socioecosystems. This new ontological paradigm requires new epistemological tools, and transdisciplinary research is inducing changes in different aspects of our scientific endeavor, including: the philosophical approach we use to observe our world; the level of commitment we put in our scientific work; the extent and scope we envision in our research goals; the geographical scale and context in which we focus our case-studies; the type of collaboration we engage in with other scientists; and the institutional arrangements we construct to accomplish our research efforts. The International Long Term Ecological Research Network (ILTER) includes national-level networks of scientists engaged and committed to conducting long-term and site-based ecological and socio-economic research and monitoring, with a strong interest in capacity building. ILTER members have expertise in the collection, management, and analysis of long-term environmental data and, together, they are responsible for creating and maintaining a large number of unique long-term datasets. ILTER has been a natural partner for global initiatives dealing with environmental issues, and many members of its community have been participating in these international programs. We should not underestimate the urgency, nor the level of commitment, required to foster worldwide socioecosystem research with a transdisciplinary approach, which are essential for the success of the sustainable Earth Stewardship initiative.KeywordsCapacity buildingCoupled socio-ecological systemsEpistemological paradigmLong-term ecological researchSocioecosystemsTransdisciplinary research