Autonomous gliders traversing across shore sections of the California Current are powerful tools for continously measuring hydrographic properties, chlorophyll a fluorescence and acoustic backscatter (at 750kHz) in the CCE study area. Sharp fronts in hydrographic properties seem to co-occur with biological fronts assoctiated with chl a fluorescence and acoustic backscatter (which is a rough proxy for zoolankton biomass). This poster examines criteria for defining both physical and biological fronts as well as the strength of interaction between the fronts.

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.

On the CCE Process Cruises in the California Current System, we used a Lagrangian sampling design to identify and track a series of discrete water parcels and entrained plankton communities through time.

Large-scale climate features such as sea level pressures and sea surface temperatures have been shown to influence streamflows in regions around the world. We examined the influence of such features on total annual flows in a summertime glacial meltwater river, the Onyx River, in the ice-free McMurdo Dry Valleys, Antarctica. The 38-year Onyx record is the longest flow record for the continent. The study focused on the December-January climate features.

Soil respiration is a major pathway of flux in the terrestrial ecosystem carbon cycle and has received a great deal of attention recently. This is largely because even a small change in soil respiration can exacerbate the annual input of CO2 into the atmosphere. Soil respiration represents the combined respiration of roots and soil micro- and macro-organisms, and a number of studies on soil respiration have been undertaken in a variety of ecosystems.

Konza Prairie Biological Station established its education program in 1996 for visitors and students interested in learning about the tallgrass prairie. With the Schoolyard LTER supplements (1998), programs for school children were developed to parallel the long-term ecological research on site and also to add information useful to scientists. Teachers participate in annual professional development workshops to learn about the prairie ecosystem, experience the protocols of several long-term scientific activities and choose one or more of these activities to add to their curriculum.

How will anticipated changes in climate interact with grassland plant community composition and diversity to affect the performance of seedlings? We ask this question for two reasons. 1) If plant species are to track spatial shifts in the locations of suitable climatic conditions, plant species must invade communities by means of seedling establishment; more diverse plant communities have been shown to be less invasible, but it is not known how warming will interact with diversity to affect invasion.

Spatial and temporal changes in alpine plant species composition were analyzed at the landscape, plant community, and individual species levels. We standardized field observations for 88 gridded vegetation plots sampled in 1990, 1997, and 2006 on Niwot Ridge, Colorado and developed spatial environmental data for the study area (snow cover, growing-degree days, time of meltout, and solar radiation). At the landscape scale, growing-degree days increased from 1990 to 2006, while the snow-covered period decreased and meltout occurred earlier.

Methane production in Siberian thaw lakes is estimated to be 3.8 Tg CH4 yr -1. When entered into global models, this estimate increases northern wetland CH4 emissions (<6-40 Tg CH4 yr -1) by 10-63% (Walter et al 2006). Methane release of this magnitude from Siberian and other northern lakes, such as those in Alaska, may be linked to the rich carbon resources available to sediment-dwelling methanogens.