2018 LTER All Scientists' Meeting

Welcome and Brief Announcements
Frank Davis, Executive Director, LTER Network Communications Office
Peter Groffman, Chair of the LTER Science Council

Introductory Remarks:
Terrence Quinn, National Science Foundation, Director, Division of Ocean Sciences

Plenary Speakers:
Stephanie Hampton, National Science Foundation, Director, Division of Environmental Biology
Dr. Hampton joined the National Science Foundation in May 2018 after serving as the Director of the Center for Environmental Research, Education and Outreach (CEREO) at Washington State University where she is a Professor in the School of the Environment. Previously she was Deputy Director of the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) for 8 years. Throughout her career, she has built connections –between disparate fields, between producers and consumers of data, between basic ecological research and its many applications. She strives to promote data sharing, open science, and wider adoption of cutting-edge informatics for more effective and transparent environmental research.Hampton’s background is in aquatic science, statistical analysis, and environmental informatics. Her research includes analyzing long-term ecological data collected from lakes as globally diverse as Lake Baikal in Siberia and Lake Washington in Seattle. Together with collaborators, she has shown how lakes respond to municipal management practices such as sewage diversion. She has also helped demonstrate the effects of climate change on plankton—the basic building blocks of aquatic food webs – with a recent emphasis on the implications of winter ice loss across the globe.

Kathleen Weathers, Cary Institute, Senior Scientist
Dr. Weathers has served as the Global Lake Ecological Observatory Network (GLEON) Steering Committee Co-Chair for the past decade. She is Principal Investigator for the GLEON Fellowship Program’s training of next-generation network scientists. She also leads GLEON’s commitment to the U.S. government-led Climate Data Initiative, its Water Theme, and the GLEON Lake Observer App development. Weathers’ research focuses on quantifying how biology affects geochemistry and biogeochemical cycling across heterogeneous landscapes, and within and among multiple systems (air-land-water). Whether studying how cyanobacteria alter lake resilience or how fog changes the structure and function of forest ecosystems, she has pursued scientific questions that are critical to landscape-level integration and ”big” data-inspired research. Weathers is an elected fellow to the Ecological Society of America and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She is the recipient of the Ecological Society of America’s Eugene P. Odum Award.