Sites 3 and 4 of the Neon Ants 2017 project visited two wonderful LTER sites on the east coast of the USA: Virginia Coast Reserve LTER, Virginia and the Harvard Forest LTER, Massachusetts. The LTER (Long Term Ecological Research: https://lternet.edu/) program covers 25 different ecosystems from Alaska to the Caribbean including deserts, estuaries, lakes, oceans, coral reefs, prairies, forests, alpine and Arctic tundra, urban areas, and production agriculture. Their project goal…
“The Network’s vision is a society in which long-term ecological knowledge contributes to the advancement of the health, productivity, and welfare of the global environment, thereby advancing human well-being. This vision underpins LTER’s mission, which is to provide the scientific community, policy makers, and society with the knowledge and predictive understanding necessary to conserve, protect, and manage the nation’s ecosystems, their biodiversity, and the services they provide.”
is core for understanding environmental phenomena over long time scales and broad spatial scales. It has been a true pleasure seeing a number of these with more to visit in the future.
Virginia Coast Reserve LTER
Harvard Forest LTER
Another update for a couple of sites will be up in a few days. Been a blast so far with a ton of wonderfully cool ants.
Roeder Lab 