The Long-Term Ecological Research Stimulus: Research, Education, and Leadership Development at Individual and Community Levels

Abstract

Through the Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) program, I have learned to appreciate the complexity of environmental dynamics when they are analyzed at multiple time and space scales. My experience as a postdoctoral fellow and in the LTER program facilitated much of my understanding of interdisciplinary research because of access to multiple disciplinary approaches and accumulation of long-term and multiple- scale information. My teaching of science benefited through recognition of the need for a combination of a deep understanding of each discipline’s role in an issue (reductionist approach) and the collaborative need for integrating disciplines to fully understand complexity. No single discipline can answer the complexity in an environmental question. I have improved my communication with the public through the combination of teaching and research reporting. The challenge is to develop the information in ways that can be communicated: free of scientific jargon, containing only essential data, and developed in scenarios that are recognized as real-life situations. The public has many forms and levels of understanding—there are K to gray and ordinary citizens and policy-makers; consequently, communication needs to be targeted appropriately. I value the role of collaboration; there is tremendous satisfaction and reward from working in teams that can accomplish so much more than can an individual. This collaboration requires compromise, interaction, and time, but those that strive for this approach to science are well recognized. I am fortunate in being in positions that have created opportunities for sustaining a long career in stimulating interdisciplinary and collaborative science. I had a traditional forest management and soil science education (Michigan Technological University and the University of Idaho). However, my entrée into ecosystem science was set up by my very valuable postdoctoral fellowship at the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest under the guidance of Gene Likens from 1969 to 1970, before the formation of the LTER program. The Hubbard Brook experience, quite literally, educated me about systems thinking, with the watershed approach to understanding integrated responses from complex, multifactor interactions and influences of forest management as disturbances.