Many LTER sites focus, at least in part, on freshwater aquatic ecosystems. The purpose of this workshop is to document why long term records, in some cases coupled with experiments, provide information about these systems that cannot be teased out under normal funding cycles of a few years, and how future aquatic monitoring networks might be designed. We will include presentations on lake and stream habitats that document the unique benefits of long-term monitoring and experimentation.

This workshop has three goals:

1) Inform interested participants about a new way to organize the LTER site information.  We offer the public a view of the information that has no dead-ends, that is, all the content is related, and each website view offers related contextual content, including data, personnel, metadata, projects, and the like.

2) Receive feedback

3) Recruit adopters and developers

The last few years have seen the development and growth and several new ecological observing networks.  The means by which these various networks have formed has been varied, as are the goals and constituencies of the networks.  This workshop will examine the history of six of these networks through short presentations, and compare the advantages and disadvantages of each kind of developing network.  The goal of the workshop is to provide insights to those who seek to form and participate in new networks as to possible models for structuring those networks.  In particula