A Proposal for the Network Office of the U.S. Long Term Ecological Research Network form an Association of Institutions

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9634135 Gosz This project will support the Network Office for the Long-term Ecological Research Network to continue critical activities including communication, data management, data dissemination, and technological advances. The Network Office will form a consortium with the San Diego Supercomputer Center, the Santa Fe Institute, the Center for Microbial Ecology at Michigan State University, and the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis. The facilities and interactions with these institutions and centers will enhance the research and creative activities of the Long-term Ecological Research sites. The principal goals of the Network Office are to (1) facilitate communication among the LTER sites to encourage integration of data sets and data analyses, (2) enhance the interaction of the LTER Network with a broad group of disciplines outside of ecology, (3) promote and disseminate new technologies relevant to long-term ecological research, and (4) provide leadership in data management and data dissemination to the LTER community and other scientific communities. Long-term data are fundamental to understanding environmental systems and the management of our natural resources. The Long-term Ecological Research program provides a unique ability to generate this important information and the current LTER sites have provided many important contributions. The LTER Network Offices plays the very important role of catalyzing intersite activities that allow the individual sites to function as an integrated network. This network approach allows new knowledge to be generated from the individual sites in the form of comparative research, synthesis and expansion to regional scales. The collaboration of the LTER network with other international networks provides unprecedented opportunities to share information with international colleagues, develop exchanges of scientists and students. And develop a global understanding of our ecological systems.