The National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) focuses on grand challenge questions in environmental science relevant to large regions that cannot be addressed with traditional ecological approaches. NEON will provide both physical and data infrastructures in order to provide usable information to scientists, teachers, students, citizens, governmental and non-governmental decision makers.

This session is intended both for social and biophysical scientists who want to help develop a proposal for the kind of “multi-site, highly collaborative and integrated research initiative” envisioned by the LTER planning group. The focus will be on what the LTER planning process calls the “centerpiece” of the group's conceptual framework, as well as one of “Grand Challenges” to be addressed at the network level – “the dynamics of coupled human-natural ecosystems.”

Over the past few years, several LTER-wide projects have created web services to easily find, access and compare long-term ecological datasets (e.g., EcoTrends*) and spatial datasets (e.g., LTER Spatial Data Workbench/CREATE**) across the LTER network; however, temporal and spatial datasets are often stored separately and accessed from different websites. Integrating long-term data and map layers from across the LTER network in a single website could be the next step in improving access to LTER’s rich legacy of both temporal and spatial data.

The major contribution of land-based activities to climate change and greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) is widely recognized by the scientific community. The question of how and whether to include the agriculture and forestry sectors in GHG emission reduction projects suitable for carbon emissions trading in ‘cap–and–trade’ programs however, remains controversial.

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).

Appropriate quantification of the spatial distribution of lead (Pb) in urban soils requires an understanding of the influence that individual landscape features have on soil Pb concentrations as well as the importance of the larger landscape context. In order to examine patterns of residential soil Pb concentrations we employed a sampling scheme that addressed both landscape context and individual landscape features predicted to affect Pb retention. The larger landscape context was considered by examining the distance to major road networks and housing age.

Aquatic ecosystems regulate material transfer between terrestrial and coastal systems, and play a significant role in regional to global carbon (C) and nutrient cycles. The functioning of inland waters is being altered by human activities such as land use change, climate change, and hydraulic engineering.

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.

Global climate change is emerging as the single most important environmental issue of the 21st century. The direct and indirect effects of climate change on terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems are highly complex and poorly understood. High elevation watersheds can be a useful unit for studying climate-induced effects because they are sensitive to global change processes and may serve as a bellwether for more resistant ecosystems of higher order watersheds.

Vulnerability and Resilience of American Landscapes to Global Change