The Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) program currently supports a network office that coordinates research across the 26 active research sites, helps to organize an annual Science Council meeting along with a tri-annual All Scientists meeting, maintains and develops data maintenance programs to ensure data availability, and provides training sessions for information management and data collection. This project will support an effort to gather broad input on potential future roles and responsibilities of a network office, survey other research networks that do or do not have coordinating offices, and suggest potential structures for a future network office. The three goals of the project are appropriate and sufficiently inclusive to ensure that diverse opinions and options are considered. An inclusive list of scientific societies, research communities, and federal agencies will be consulted for input. The task force assembled to implement these activities consists of leading researchers in the fields of ecology, environmental biology, and ecosystem science. The results obtained will contribute significantly to the development of a network office that ensures communication and cooperation across the diverse LTER community.
The broader impacts of this project are strong. The task force itself is comprised of 4 female researchers and one male, tipping the normal balance of scientific activities. The diverse activities planned will ensure that a wide range of ethnic groups is included along with individuals from very different sorts of institutions. Finally, the current network office has lead responsibility for a large number of LTER broader impacts, and these will figure heavily into the task force discussions.
The Task Force was composed of scientists represetning diverse backgrounds, relevant to the activities of the monitoring and research networks. The Task Force was convened with an overall goal of re-envisioning the Network Office of the Long-term Ecological Research (LTER) program for the future. The Task Force solicited advice from the broad ecological community, educators and other stakeholders in LTER network activities. The Task Force held open meetings at the Ecological Society of America and the American Geophyscla Union. Both meetings were well attended and the attendees contributed many comments related to the themes of scientific synthesis, data management, outreach and education. These contributions were summarized and considered by the Task Force in their subsequent meetings. The Task Force also organized a booth at the Denver regional meeting of the National Science Teachers Association where several books from the LTER Schoolyard Book Series were presented to promote interactions with educators. Members of the Task Force spoke with a number of teachers and educational faculty from local universities to learn about their potential interests. The Task Force conducted an online survey, which had several hundred respondents. Members of the Task Force also made site visits, including a visit at the offices of the National Ecological Observatory Network. Based on this diverse input, the Task Force prepared a report, which was submitted to NSF.
