Implementing the ILTER Science Agenda: Defining International and Regional Science Initiatives Since its 2003 annual meeting, the International Long Term Ecological Research network (ILTER) transformed itself from essentially an infrastructure-building project to a more diversified, stable organization with the ability to implement substantive scientific projects in collaboration with the US-LTER International Committee (see web link in working group materials). Following the 2003 ILTER annual meeting, the ILTER science committee organized a series of science symposia and workshops on the ILTER science agenda, including a workshop conducted during the 2006 ASM (see workshop link in working group materials). In 2007, an ILTER science agenda that synthesized the results of these meetings was presented during the ILTER business meeting and approved unanimously by the ILTER Coordinating Committee(see document link in working group materials).  A salient feature of the ILTER science agenda is that it is based on the feedback model framework which was developed in 2007 under the US-LTER strategic research initiative "Integrative Science for Society and the Environment" (ISSE) and by several workshops on land use and ES. An ILTER science initiative entitled “Interactions among ecosystem services, ecosystem dynamics, and human outcomes and behavior” (see working group materials), was developed in 2007 to prototype ILTER network-level science that includes interdisciplinary approaches, integration, and synthesis. The ecosystem services (ES) initiative is the first network?level attempt by the ILTER to address the linkages between ES and human outcomes and behavior, and how they influence each other in biomes. Using the lessons learned from the ILTER ES initiatives and the US-LTER network-wide working group projects, the specific goals of this working group, under the general objectives of facilitating and catalyzing international linkages and interdisciplinary approaches, are to:

• Facilitate the identification, development and implementation of global/regional, long-term science initiatives involving US-LTER scientists and ILTER and other global science program colleagues.
• Facilitate and coordinate the involvement of US-LTER scientists in developing and strengthening regional networks as well as individual-country networks.
• Facilitate the participation of US-LTER scientists in the establishment and maintenance of effective data/information infrastructures within the ILTER.