Litter decomposition is an important process for nutrient and organic matter dynamics in forest ecosystem, and influenced by various biotic and abiotic factors. Ltter quality such as nitrogen and lignin contents is one of the important indicators to understand the difference of pattern and rate in the litter decomposition among different vegetation in forest ecosystem of northern Hokkaido, Japan. However, the pattern and rate in Sasa litter decomposition, their difference with the tree litter and their relations to the litter chemical property has not been clarified yet.

Resource control in the western Pyrenees from 1800 to the present is addressed by reference to external factors: historical events; economic, technological and policy changes; and in the context of the “house system,” which functioned and continues to function as a control agent of environmental exploitation practices. The issue for the present is political, having to do with the conflict of legitimacy fed by the confusion that exists over the concept of the mountain: “free space” (high mountain zone) vs.

Large and complex watersheds, as result of complex topography, characterize the Mexican landscape. And although water for human consumption is becoming more limited as water demands increase, there is incomplete information on current and future water availability. As water resources become scarce, it is not clear how ecosystem services of economic critical ecosystems will be impacted due to limited water supply in Mexico. The objective of this project is to evaluate how ecosystem resiliency capacity is controlled by the hydrological connectivity in a variety of Mexican ecosystems.

<Mt. Malindang Natural Park is one of the Philippine LTER sites. It is  protected area and situated on an extinct volcano in the province of Misamis Occidental, Philippines. The natural resources of the park are being threatened by the economic activities of the local people. Deforestation in Mt Malindang has reduced the water supply in the upland and lowland areas of the park. This project was conducted to rehabilitate the degraded forest ecosysytem in the park by replanting indigenous tree species involving the local communities.

The Pantanal wetland is one of the largest wetlands in the world (ca. 140.000 km2). Most of the time series collected from this natural system result in partial data set, specially water quality, thus compromising the performance of usual statistical analysis. The main goal of this research is to apply a new computational methodology for short time series analysis, showing non-linear behaviour in the time, amplitude and frequency domains to understand the hydro-ecological functioning of this river-floodplain system.

The National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII) entered in 2004 in a five year cooperative agreement with LTER. The NBII-LTER cooperative agreement is the result of efforts championed by W. Michener dating back to 2000. The overarching goal is the interoperability of both networks: Sharing the wealth on information on ecological and biological resources, and offer those to educators,, scientists, lawmakers and the public in general.