Suspended solids in streams are important to monitor and manage because high levels of suspended solids have been shown to affect the primary and secondary production of a stream. The loading rate of total suspended solids (TSS) can greatly be influenced by the land management of a stream site’s catchment area. A computer-based geographic information system (GIS) was used to assess what land cover/land use variables were highly correlated to high levels of TSS in Kansas Flinthill streams on a long-term data set collected by the Kansas Department of Health and Environment.

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.”

Plant phenology - the seasonal timing of growth, reproduction, and senescence - can be measured from the scale of individuals to biomes. Understanding the timing of plant canopy development and how it is related to climatic variables is an important step in our understanding of how grassland ecosystems are being altered by a changing climate. In this poster we compare 2 years of plant canopy development in a dry year (2002) and an average precipitation year (2005).