Wireless networks provide new opportunities for retrieving data from the field - and to support new types of data. At the Virginia Coast Reserve Long-Term Ecological Research Project we have employed wireless networks to connect to three barrier islands, with some connections spanning over 20 km. The wireless network is used to integrate a variety of data sources. A network of ten wells, meteorological and tide stations produce data that is automatically processed to create a dataset or graph on the World-Wide Web.

The Virginia Coast Reserve (VCR) is an extremely dynamic, heterogeneous coastal barrier landscape comprising mainland watersheds, tidal marshes, lagoons, and barrier islands. Our goal for the VCR LTER program is to develop a predictive understanding of the response of coastal barrier systems to long-term environmental changes in climate, sea level and land use, and to relate these to the ecological services the coastal barrier systems provide.

The MIRADA project was launched in the fall of 2007 to establish a Microbial Biodiversity Survey and Inventory across all 13 of the major aquatic (marine and freshwater) Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) sites in the NSF US LTER Program. The long-term objective of our study is to document and describe baseline diversity and relative abundance data for both common and rare members of microbial communities and to relate this diversity to the underlying physical and chemical environment.

Coastal bays, which are typically shallow, located in the photic zone, and have little freshwater input, respond differently to nutrient enrichment than deeper estuaries. Because of the diversity of benthic and pelagic autotrophs they support, coastal bays are capable of modulating the effects of nutrient enrichment, derived from both allochthonous and autochthonous sources. We describe a study performed in Hog Island Bay, Virginia, located along an eutrophication gradient on the Delmarva Peninsula, to determine sources, sinks, and fates of nitrogen (N).

A Research Experience for High School Students program (REHS), modeled after the Research Experience for Undergraduates, was initiated at the Virginia Coast Reserve LTER in 2007 with supplemental funding to our SLTER Program.

A field experiment has been initiated in August 2008 to determine if the vegetation of a coastal marsh is in synchrony with hydrologic conditions that have developed with rising sea-level. The hypothesis being tested is that plant community structure will persist in existing zones of vegetation in the face of sea-level rise unless disturbance provides opportunities for species change under more frequent tidal inundation.

Seagrass meadows are declining worldwide as a result of nutrient over-enrichment, warming water temperatures, and anthropogenic disturbances. In many areas, restoration projects are attempting to the reverse the trend with varying success. In the Virginia coastal lagoons, seagrasses (Zostera marina) were lost in the 1930’s due to a large hurricane impacting meadows already weakened by the wasting disease. A large-scale restoration effort has been underway since the early 2000’s and has resulted in >1000 acres of seagrass coverage.

The US Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) program began in 1980 to address large scale ecological phenomena through research at individual sites and through comparative and synthetic activities among sites. We applied network science measures to assess how the LTER program has performed as a coherent system using joint publications among sites as the measure of collaborations across sites. We identified three periods of increasing collaboration.

Shallow coastal bays such as those along the U.S. east coast are particularly vulnerable to changes in coastal zone activities that result in accelerated nutrient delivery rates. A major challenge in these systems is to understand how increased nutrient loading affects ecosystem structure and function. Much of the benthos in these shallow bays is illuminated by sunlight; as a result, benthic autotrophs such as seagrass, benthic microalgae (BMA) and macroalgae play an integral role in nutrient cycling.

In addition to seed deposition of both native and invasive plant species, birds may pollinate flowers, provide nutrient inputs, and deliver mutualistic or pathogenic microbes. Birds therefore may drive community assembly and succession, and play an especially significant role in the frequently-disturbed environments of barrier islands, where repopulation following storm and overwash events is critical to long-term species persistence.