The KBS LTER site is in a diverse, rural-to-semirural landscape typical of the U.S. Great Lakes and upper Midwest regions. Research at KBS asks how diverse plants, animals, and microbes in agricultural landscapes can contribute to farm productivity, environmental performance, and profitability. We study annual and perennial crops including corn, soybean, and wheat rotations, forage crops such as alfalfa, and biofuel crops such as poplars, switchgrass, and native successional communities.

Tropical environments are changing fast due to deforestation and regrowth, urbanization, climate change, and other forces. The consequences are immense for the whole array of ecosystem services people require. The Luquillo Long-Term Ecological Research Program (LUQ) is tackling these issues in Puerto Rico. LUQ began in 1988 and focused on natural disturbances (hurricanes, landslides, droughts, floods) and ecosystem response. That work revealed patterns of resistance and resilience to cycles of natural disturbance.

Stabilization of organic matter on mineral surfaces strongly affects rates of soil organic matter (SOM) accumulation and turnover. Controls over SOM are of particular interest in arid and semi-arid systems where the abundance of woody plants has increased globally over the past century. This proliferation of woody plants may lead to significant soil organic carbon (SOC) accumulation, although a large degree of uncertainty exists in the direction and magnitude of SOC pool responses to woody encroachment.

The National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) is a national-scale research platform for assessing the impacts of climate change, land-use change, and invasive species on ecosystem structure and function.

In arid ecosystems, current year precipitation explains a low proportion of the annual aboveground net primary production (ANPP). There is evidence that precipitation that occurred in previous years is responsible for the observed difference between actual and expected ANPP, a concept called legacy. Here, we study the mechanisms that generate these legacies, thus we will able to better understand the controls of the global carbon cycle, and to forecast changes in ANPP with a changing climate.

The Luquillo Long Term Ecological Research Program (LUQ) focuses on understanding factors driving long-term change in tropical forest ecosystems in the Luquillo Mountains. To increase our understanding of biotic and abiotic controls on ecosystems, we extended our work from the tabonuco forest to a range of forest types occurring along a climatic and forest gradient in the Luquillo Mountains.

Hurricanes are major perturbations in Caribbean forests. They result in canopy removal and deposition of pulses of litter to the forest floor, which can alter biotic and biogeochemical processes. In Puerto Rico, Hurricane Georges (1998) struck the Luquillo Mountains and caused 0.55 – 0.93 times the annual litterfall. Forest floor standing stocks were then 1.2 - 2.5 times greater than pre-Georges values. Litter standing stocks returned to normal within a year; but it was not clear if canopy opening and/or hurricane litter deposition had stimulated decomposition.

Primary production in arid and semiarid systems is predominantly limited by water availability. Precipitation is a strong predictor of primary production at broad scales in these systems. However, due to local variability in soil-water availability associated with landscape position, soil characteristics, and species composition, precipitation can be a pore predictor of production at finer scales. Thus, measured soil moisture content should provide a better predictor of primary production at fine scales.

Rusty crayfish (Orconectes rusticus) are invasive in the upper Midwest United States. They often reach high densities and negatively affect native crayfish species, aquatic macrophytes, benthic invertebrates, and some fish populations. However, in some lakes rusty crayfish do not achieve high densities and do not negatively affect native biota. We conducted a whole-lake experiment designed to remove rusty crayfish from Sparkling Lake, a part of the North Temperate Lakes LTER site in Vilas County, Wisconsin.

Coastal marshes must increase elevation to maintain themselves in the face of sea-level rise. At the same time processes at their borders determine areal extent by fostering erosion or progradation at the seaward edge and transgression or stalling landward. Two major plant communities are recognized in many salt marshes: the high marsh and low marsh. At the mainland portion of the Virginia Coast Reserve we consider the high marsh to be dominated by Distichlis spicata and Spartina patens with prominent patches of Juncus roemerianus.