April 2012 Issue of BioScience Highlights LTER Research

BioScience has published a collection of six synthesis articles derived from long-term ecological research to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the US LTER Network. The special issues contains articles that describe the future research goals of the LTER Network in an ever increasing human-dominated world, the role of long-term studies in environmental stewardship, the use of scenarios as a synthetic research activity to describe and evaluate alternative futures, the role of long-term manipulative field experiments in ecological research, streamflow responses to human activities and climate change, and the consequences of the rapid loss of the cryosphere - the portion of the Earth's surface that is frozen for a month or more each year. For more information please see http://www.nsf.gov/discoveries/disc_summ.jsp?cntn_id=123718&org=NSF and http://www.aibs.org/publications/