The US Long Term Ecological Research Program

Abstract

Term Ecological Research (LTER) program has now grown to 24 projects involving more than 1100 scientists. This article describes why the program exists and what it does. But the success of a scientific program cannot be measured by the number of sites or scientists involved in a project. Instead, the question must be, What have the LTER program and its longterm data sets contributed to the intellectual progress of ecological and environmental sciences? This special section takes direct aim at this question in six articles focusing on accomplishments of the LTER program in discrete areas of ecological research.The goal of each article is to highlight LTER contributions, not to provide an extensive review of an ecological topic. Readers should keep in mind that LTER projects make many other contributions than those described here.