2018 LTER All Scientists' Meeting

This workshop will discuss the development of synergies between the US Long-term
Ecological Research (LTER), Critical Zone Observatory (CZO) and National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) programs , which rely on different, but complementary approaches to network-enabled science. LTER and CZO focus on long-term research projects aimed at understanding ecological pattern and process in a wide range of ecosystems, while NEON is a continental-scale observation facility designed to examine ecological change over time. Despite these differences, there are great potential synergies between LTER, CZO and NEON that are beginning to emerge across a range of research areas.  LTERand CZO observations, experiments, and comparative studies are providing theory, methods, and historical context, while NEON measurements provide standardization and broad scale coverage. Overall, NEON provides information on how ecosystems are changing, while LTER and CZO provide information on why these changes occur. There is a strong need to develop programs and agreements to foster the emergence of these synergies to further network science in support of resource management and environmental policy at local to global scales.