The dominant theme of socio-ecological research in the Luquillo LTER Research Program is the influence of land use change on local climate change, secondary forest dynamics, watershed and stream processes, and ecosystem services. Much of our research is being developed in the context of the steep urban to wildlands gradient from the Rio Piedras watershed (RPW) in the center of San Juan metropolitan area(SJMA) to the Luquillo Experimental Forest (LEF) some 25 km away. So far we have found (1) a strong heat island effect (~3?C) along this gradient; (2) that the interaction of hurricane disturbance and human land use legacies generate novel forest species associations; (3) the existence of novel assemblages of aquatic communities in the Rio Piedras subject to extreme physiochemical conditions; (4) that the ecosystem services provided by the LEF are dominated by the extreme amounts of water diverted from streams (~70% of stream flow) to human uses; and (5) perceptions of ecosystems services held by residents near the LEF are quite different from those assumed by forest managers. A Biocomplexity grant has documented recreational use of streams in the LEF, the interactions of recreators with the aquatic biota, and the functioning of an artisanal fishery. Members of our group were recently awarded an ULTRA-Ex grant from NSF, which creates an umbrella for socio-ecological research focused on the RPW, the urban end member of our regional research program. This will allow future LUQ research to focus on human-environment interactions and landscape change in rural/suburban areas between the LEF and SJMA.