A Proposal for the Network Office of the U.S. Long Term Ecological Research Network

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The LTER Network Office (NET) was transferred to the University of New Mexico in 1997. NET objectives have been to provide basic services to LTER, facilitate communication among LTER sites and between LTER and the broader environmental sciences community, promote new technologies, and provide leadership in data and information management. Since NET moved to Albuquerque, LTER has grown from 18 to 24 sites and the number of associated scientists has expanded from 894 to more than 1500. This proposal represents a request to renew the LTER Network Office for the next six years. Five essential NET Service functions that are central to the operation of LTER would be continued and enhanced to better meet community needs. Funding is also requested to expand four other focal areas that are key to broadening the impact of LTER on science and society.The five essential NET functions supported through this project include: (1) service to the LTER community (e.g., proposal preparation, accounting, meeting coordination); (2) computational and communication infrastructure (e.g., e-mail, database backups, web access); (3) information management and methods development (e.g., data and metadata standardization, curation and expansion of LTER Network databases); (4) network development, community outreach and training (e.g., coordination of the Partnership for Biodiversity Informatics, OBFS training and database development); and (5) publications and public outreach (e.g., newsletters, web site, synthesis volumes). Two expanded and related NET functions are essential to enabling LTER to reach new levels of understanding of long-term ecological patterns and processes: (6) Synthesis (e.g., integration and synthesis via working groups, creation of value-added databases) and (7) Information System Design and Development (e.g., distributed data networking, dataintegration tools). Funding is also requested to continue and broaden the impacts that LTER has on the international scientific community and environmental education in the United States via: (8) International LTER (e.g., coordination of ILTER meetings, ILTER publications, informatics training) and (9) Education (e.g., facilitation of site-based education programs, workshops). A tenth activity, the implementation of a 21 st Century Strategic Plan for the LTER Network, would be completed within the first two years of the NET renewal.During the next six years, the LTER Network office will continue to facilitate knowledge advances and understanding within ecology by (1) promoting LTER communication among sites and throughout the ecological sciences and (2) disseminating data, information, and knowledge via the web, synthesis and publications, training, and community and public outreach. New efforts and resources devoted to synthesis and information system development, international LTER, and education will significantly broaden the impact of LTER science by enabling us to better provide integrated and synthetic data and information to the broader scientific community, students, and policy-makers. In addition, we will greatly increase our efforts to expand LTER into a global scientific enterprise via ILTER and expand the reach of LTER education beyondthe schoolyard (i.e., from K-12 to policy-makers to the general public). We will further expand our efforts to reach underserved groups, incorporating an enhanced focus on Chicanos and Native Americans.The revised SOW comprises the ten following sections, arranged to reflect the organization of DEB-0236154. A revised budget and budget justification accompany this document. Strategic planning documents will be submitted separately. Each section of the SOW details activities which will and will not take place under the revised budget. The requested budget is tied to specific activities, which in turn are linked to the personnel time needed to complete the activity. The revised SOW specifically identifiesactivities that will benefit the LTER Network, the International LTER Network, the general scientific community, the education community, the University of New Mexico (UNM), or NSF.