Alliaria petiolata (garlic mustard) is an herbaceous biennial herb that has been present in the New England landscape for over a century. We investigated the ecological and historical factors affecting A. petiolata's invasion pattern across the New England landscape, including forest community structure, geophysical attributes, and habitat fragmentation. One-hundred-and-seventy-five 25× 100 m roadside, forested plots across two ecoregions were visited in the summers of 2006 and 2007. A. petiolata presence and cover, dominant canopy species, slope, and soil moisture were recorded.

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.

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.

 The primary research focus of the Santa Barbara Coastal (SBC) LTER is on the relative importance of bottom-up processes and allochthonous inputs to giant kelp forests, a highly diverse and productive marine ecosystem that occurs on shallow rocky reefs at the interface of the land-ocean margin. Giant kelp forests are found along the temperate coasts of western North and South America, southern Africa, Australia and most sub Antarctic islands, including Tasmania and New Zealand.

Annual regeneration and sustainability of perennial grass populations rely heavily on the belowground population of meristems (the bud bank), yet the dynamics, morphology, and population sizes of grass bud banks have not been explored. Since the two major photosynthetic guilds of grasses vary in their aboveground phenology, their belowground bud bank phenology would likely vary as well.

We propose that an LTER-wide taxonomic database would minimize much of the work of resolving taxonomic differences for future cross-site, network level research projects. The EcoTrends project has built a database to standardize site codes and nomenclature with USDA PLANTS database symbols* and/or the Integrated Taxonomic Information System (ITIS) taxonomic serial numbers across all participating sites (totaling >1800 plant and animal species at 14 sites). We would like your help to improve, expand, and share it.