Beneficiary of a Changed Paradigm: Perspectives of a “Next-Generation” Scientist

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth T. Borer
Keyword(s):  
Associate Professor ◽  
Interactive Effects ◽  
Ecosystem Functions ◽  
Global Changes ◽  
Plant Interactions ◽  
University Of Minnesota ◽  
Analysis And Synthesis ◽  
Long Term Ecological Research ◽  
A Site

As a scientist, the Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) program has deeply influenced my approach to scientific inquiry by creating an environment of effective collaboration and long-term evaluations of ecosystems. The increasing emphasis on data management and sharing has shaped both the philosophy and implementation of my scientific projects. I have become a highly collaborative scientist because of my experiences with the effectiveness of collaborative inquiry, put in place by initiatives including the LTER program and institutes such as National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS). I have been involved in the LTER program since I began my first faculty position at Oregon State University in 2004. Although my primary site affiliation is now Cedar Creek Ecosystem Science Reserve (CDR), I have ongoing experiments and collaborations spanning nine LTER sites (Borer et al. 2014b). I am a community ecologist with work that bridges into ecosystems. My research focuses on quantifying the consequences of global changes (e.g., nitrogen deposition, species invasions and extinctions) for interactions among species, including host–pathogen, plant–herbivore, and plant–plant interactions, and the resulting consequences for ecosystem functions. Since 2007, I have been the lead principal investigator of the Nutrient Network (NutNet; www.nutnet.org), a global scientific cooperative of more than 100 scientists performing identically replicated experiments at more than 75 sites in 17 countries on 6 continents to examine the interactive effects of herbivory and multiple nutrients on controlling critical processes and functions in the world’s grasslands (Borer et al. 2014a). I am currently an associate professor in the Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior Department at the University of Minnesota and serve as senior personnel on the ongoing National Science Foundation (NSF) grant supporting CDR. My LTER site affiliation is not entirely clear in my own mind, even though I am listed as a scientist at CDR. Although I have ongoing projects at LTER sites, primarily at CDR, I do not consider myself a site-based researcher in the LTER program.

Long-Term Ecological Research and Evolving Frameworks of Disturbance Ecology

BioScience ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 70 (2) ◽  
pp. 141-156 ◽  
Author(s):  
Evelyn E Gaiser ◽  
David M Bell ◽  
Max C N Castorani ◽  
Daniel L Childers ◽  
Peter M Groffman ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Changes ◽  
Global Environmental Change ◽  
Disturbance Ecology ◽  
Ecological Systems ◽  
Environmental Drivers ◽  
Global Changes ◽  
Ecological Research ◽  
Social Ecological ◽  
Long Term Ecological Research

Abstract Detecting and understanding disturbance is a challenge in ecology that has grown more critical with global environmental change and the emergence of research on social–ecological systems. We identify three areas of research need: developing a flexible framework that incorporates feedback loops between social and ecological systems, anticipating whether a disturbance will change vulnerability to other environmental drivers, and incorporating changes in system sensitivity to disturbance in the face of global changes in environmental drivers. In the present article, we review how discoveries from the US Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) Network have influenced theoretical paradigms in disturbance ecology, and we refine a framework for describing social–ecological disturbance that addresses these three challenges. By operationalizing this framework for seven LTER sites spanning distinct biomes, we show how disturbance can maintain or alter ecosystem state, drive spatial patterns at landscape scales, influence social–ecological interactions, and cause divergent outcomes depending on other environmental changes.

Networking: From the Long-Term Ecological Research Program to the National Ecological Observatory Network

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce P. Hayden
Keyword(s):  
Atlantic Coast ◽  
Associate Professor ◽  
Cape Cod ◽  
Ecological Research ◽  
Environmental Biology ◽  
The North ◽  
Virginia Coast Reserve ◽  
Long Term Ecological Research ◽  
Disciplinary Background

As a scientist, the Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) program has been on my mind for more than three decades. As an educator, I have served in the classroom for 41 years. The merger of the physical and the ecological sciences was at the core of my teaching philosophy. As a science communicator, I informed the general public on issues of climate and climate change. As a collaborator, I found that understanding strengths and weaknesses in collaborative partnerships best ensures success. As a science leader, I served at the National Science Foundation (NSF) as the Director of the Division of Environmental Biology (DEB), established the Schoolyard LTER Program, and launched the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON). My disciplinary background includes formal graduate education at the University of Wisconsin in meteorology, climatology, and paleoclimatology, as well as in oceanography and biology (mycology, botany, zoology, and genecology). As a postdoctoral fellow, my scientific identity was on track to culminate as a paleoclimatologist. As an assistant and associate professor, my identity morphed to include coastal geomorphology (Hayden et al. 1995). Finally, my experiences in the LTER program have vectored my career toward the interactions of climate and vegetation (Hayden 1998). My affiliation is with the Virginia Coast Reserve (VCR) site in the LTER program (1986–2014). As one of the founding principal investigators of the VCR site, I have served in subsequent renewals as its principal or co-principal investigator. Our site-based research plan focused on the Virginia Coast Reserve on Virginia’s eastern shore with a focus on the dynamics of the chain of 14 barrier islands, bounded by the entrance to the Chesapeake Bay to the south and Assateague Barrier Island to the north. This peninsula is 100 km in length by 20 km in width. Only the islands fronting the Mississippi delta are more dynamic in both the temporal and spatial domains. Prior to joining the LTER program, my research was hemispheric to regional in scope, and it focused on the environmental dynamics of the Atlantic Coast from Florida to Cape Cod at 50-m intervals (Fenster and Hayden 2007).

Listening to Nature and Letting Data Be “Trump”

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Tilman
Keyword(s):  
Field Experiments ◽  
Resource Competition ◽  
Associate Professor ◽  
Freshwater Algae ◽  
Rigorous Results ◽  
Cedar Creek ◽  
Grassland Ecosystems ◽  
Theoretical Predictions ◽  
Long Term Ecological Research

My long-term research, which has focused on major ecological mysteries and questions, has provided many unexpected insights into the processes, mechanisms, and feedbacks that determine the structure and functioning of the grassland ecosystems. Many of these insights have emerged from exploring these questions with a combination of well-replicated field experiments, long-term observations, and predictions of theory. A major source of research creativity has been my instinct to pay the deepest attention to any rigorous results that fall outside the realm of current paradigms, concepts, or theoretical predictions, including the predictions of my own theories. I refer to this as “listening to nature” and letting data be “trump.” It is when current ideas fail and “things fall apart” that new hypotheses are generated that are so crucial for the advancement of science. My teaching builds on this approach: trying to have each lecture explore a mystery or paradox, including those with which I am currently grappling, and challenging my students to propose solutions. Perhaps because they are not saturated with the current paradigms of ecology, students and members of the public frequently respond to ecological mysteries with great creativity. I believe that the amazing privilege of having public support for my research obliges me to communicate my findings of relevance to society through public talks, testimony to legislative committees, interviews with the media, and discussion with business leaders. In 1981, when we were writing the initial Cedar Creek Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) proposal, I was a 32-year-old, 6-year-post-PhD associate professor at the University of Minnesota. I had spent most of my career doing mathematical theory and laboratory studies of resource competition between freshwater algae. I had started doing nutrient-addition field experiments in the Cedar Creek grasslands only 3 years earlier and had just finished writing a book on resource competition (Tilman 1982). Hutchinson’s (1961) “paradox of the plankton”—the search for the forces and processes that allowed so many competing species to coexist with each other, whether algae in lakes, herbaceous species in grasslands, or trees in tropical forests—was intriguing.

My Evolution as a Long- Term Ecological Research Scientist

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
John J. Magnuson
Keyword(s):  
College Education ◽  
Associate Professor ◽  
Solid Base ◽  
Ecological Research ◽  
Lake Ecosystems ◽  
University Of Wisconsin ◽  
Long Term Ecological Research ◽  
The University ◽  
Field Stations

My college education as a fish and fishery ecologist provided a solid base for my evolution to a scientist absorbed by the long-term ecology of lakes in the landscape. Graduate students in the Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) program and in my course lectures came to represent more disciplines and became more interdisciplinary, often addressing major ecological questions using long-term data. Viewing the dynamics of a time series and spatial maps became strong approaches in the LTER program for communicating with colleagues and the broader community. The LTER program would have failed without the realization and the broad application of collaboration. That is true, of course, for much of what we do. The LTER program is a great way to participate in and learn from a life of science teaching, research, application, and outreach. My association with the LTER program began in the late 1970s when I was a 41- year-old associate professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. It continued through the remainder of my professional life to the present; I am now an 80-year-old emeritus professor at the Center for Limnology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. I had been the program director for Ecology in the Division of Environmental Biology at the National Science Foundation (NSF) for 1 year (1975–1976) and saw the first movements toward such a program. I participated in all three NSF workshops in the late 1970s to consider and plan an LTER program. At the workshops, I represented the perspectives of limnology and our field site at the Trout Lake Station in northern Wisconsin. Ideas being discussed and planned were of great interest to me. I believed that research opportunities at field stations with this long- term approach were important to the ecological sciences and to biological field stations across the country. My colleagues and I at the University of Wisconsin–Madison responded to NSF’s initial call for proposals; we were one of the first six sites to be funded for a proposal entitled “Long-Term Ecological Research on Lake Ecosystems.”

Major Approaches to Assessing the Fiscal Sustainability of the Constituent Entities of the Russian Federation

2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (6) ◽  
pp. 577-583
Author(s):  
L. A. Tuaeva ◽  
I. Z. Toguzova ◽  
S. K. Tokaeva
Keyword(s):  
Russian Federation ◽  
Systems Approach ◽  
Fiscal Sustainability ◽  
Qualitative Assessment ◽  
Universal System ◽  
Russian Scientific ◽  
Analysis And Synthesis ◽  
The Russian Federation ◽  
State And Local

The presented study develops theoretical and methodological foundations for assessing the fiscal sustainability of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation in perspective.Aim. The study aims to develop a systems approach to assessing the fiscal sustainability of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation in the medium and long term.Tasks. The authors analyze the major approaches to assessing the fiscal sustainability of federal subjects and determine the significance of quantitative and qualitative assessment methods in the development of a methodology for assessing the fiscal sustainability of federal subjects in the medium and long term.Methods. This study uses scientific methods of cognition, analysis and synthesis, comparison and analogy, systems and institutional approaches to assess the fiscal sustainability of federal subjects.Results. The authors examine the major approaches to assessing the fiscal sustainability of federal subjects developed by Russian scientific schools and disciplines; approaches used by state and local authorities; approaches to assessing the fiscal sustainability of federal subjects used by international and national rating agencies; foreign experience. In general, this implies the development of a universal system of indicators for assessing the fiscal sustainability of federal subjects.Conclusions. It is substantiated that under the current conditions of new challenges, particularly in the context of the coronavirus pandemic, it is necessary to assess the long-term balance and sustainability of the budgets of federal subjects using a systems approach based on quantitative and qualitative methods, making allowance for the medium- and long-term prospects to make efficient management decisions at different levels of the economic system.

scholarly journals Connectivity: insights from the U.S. Long Term Ecological Research Network

Ecosphere ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
David M. Iwaniec ◽  
Michael Gooseff ◽  
Katharine N. Suding ◽  
David Samuel Johnson ◽  
Daniel C. Reed ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Research Network ◽  
Ecological Research ◽  
Long Term Ecological Research ◽  
The U.S

scholarly journals Edible Energy Production and Energy Return on Investment—Long-Term Analysis of Global Changes

Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 1011
Author(s):  
Bartłomiej Bajan ◽  
Joanna Łukasiewicz ◽  
Agnieszka Poczta-Wajda ◽  
Walenty Poczta
Keyword(s):  
Energy Efficiency ◽  
Return On Investment ◽  
Food Production ◽  
Energy Production ◽  
Crop Production ◽  
Fossil Fuels ◽  
Animal Production ◽  
Global Changes ◽  
Energy Return On Investment

The projected increase in the world’s population requires an increase in the production of edible energy that would meet the associated increased demand for food. However, food production is strongly dependent on the use of energy, mainly from fossil fuels, the extraction of which requires increasing input due to the depletion of the most easily accessible deposits. According to numerous estimations, the world’s energy production will be dependent on fossil fuels at least to 2050. Therefore, it is vital to increase the energy efficiency of production, including food production. One method to measure energy efficiency is the energy return on investment (EROI), which is the ratio of the amount of energy produced to the amount of energy consumed in the production process. The literature lacks comparable EROI calculations concerning global food production and the existing studies only include crop production. The aim of this study was to calculate the EROI of edible crop and animal production in the long term worldwide and to indicate the relationships resulting from its changes. The research takes into account edible crop and animal production in agriculture and the direct consumption of fossil fuels and electricity. The analysis showed that although the most underdeveloped regions have the highest EROI, the production of edible energy there is usually insufficient to meet the food needs of the population. On the other hand, the lowest EROI was observed in highly developed regions, where production ensures food self-sufficiency. However, the changes that have taken place in Europe since the 1990s indicate an opportunity to simultaneously reduce the direct use of energy in agriculture and increase the production of edible energy, thus improving the EROI.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document