• General Resources in Ecology and Ecological Change
• The U.S. Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) Program
• International LTER Efforts
• Time Series and Other Data in Ecological Research
• Population Ecology and Dynamics
• Ecological Forecasting

he Web is bulging with sites related to ecological study and environmental change, built by scientific, academic, governmental, and advocacy organizations. We provide only a tiny sample here; most of these sites include copious links to other locations.

Ecological Society of America

Principal North American organization promoting ecological science. Includes sections devoted to long-term studies and paleoecology.

NASA Global Change Master Directory

Well-known mother lode of data and data sources on global environmental change. Includes rich collections of resources on ecological dynamics, terrestrial ecosystems, and human dimensions of environmental change.

GlobalChange.gov

Umbrella site drawing together data and resources from a variety of U.S. government-funded global change initiatives, with a particular focus on the impacts of long-term climate change. The program's 2001 report, Our Changing Planet, includes sections on ecosystem change and the human dimensions of global change.

Association for Biodiversity Information

Site includes a strong collection of biodiversity information resources organized by geographic area, plant or animal species, and ecological community.

Organization of Biological Field Stations

Association encompassing approximately 180 field stations in North and Central America involved in long-term ecological monitoring and research.

Ecological Dictionaries

Quick lookups of selected ecological terms can be found at the UCMP Glossary of Natural History Terms: Ecology at U.C. Berkeley and the 368-term Ecology Glossary at AllWords.com.

s might be expected, the immense, ramified -- and highly successful -- Long-Term Ecological Research network (reviewed in a news article in the 27 July 2001 special issue) has spawned an equally imposing presence on the World Wide Web. Here's a guide to the program's main online destinations.

The U.S. Long-Term Ecological Research Network

Well-built, attractive headquarters site of the huge NSF-sponsored U.S. LTER program. Offerings include a brief description of the subject biomes and goals, and a "slide show" or related images, for each of the program's 24 sites; information about the program's data access and sharing policies; an educational site, Schoolyard LTER; and much more.

LTER Project Sites

An even better view of the LTER project's impressive scope emerges from the individual Web servers of the 24 sites themselves.

H. J. Andrews Experimental Forest -- Remarkably deep site (800-plus pages) focusing on experimental forest in Oregon that has seen long-term ecological research since the 1950s. Be sure to visit the Web site's navigation page before attempting to burrow in further.

Baltimore Ecosystem Study -- Unusual undertaking that "aims to understand metropolitan Baltimore as an ecological system."

Arctic LTER (Toolik Lake) -- Impacts of global warming, nutrient supply variations, and other large-scale changes on sensitive arctic ecosystems.

Bonanza Creek Experimental Forest -- Research site located around 20 km south of Fairbanks, Alaska.

Central Arizona-Phoenix LTER -- Like the Baltimore LTER site, this one is devoted to studying the ecology of an urban system.

Cedar Creek Natural History Area -- LTER site that "lies near the confluence of three great biomes of North America": the eastern deciduous forest, the northern boreal forest, and the prairie that extends west to the Rocky Mountains.

Coweeta LTER -- Long-term dynamics of eastern deciduous forest and stream ecosystems.

Florida Coastal Everglades LTER -- Impact of climate change and other regional controls on Everglades ecosystem dynamics.

Georgia Coastal Ecosystems LTER Project -- Study of "the role of water transport in the ecological linkages between upland areas and the coastal zone in central Georgia."

Harvard Forest -- Venerable research location studying population and vegetation dynamics and climate change impacts in an eastern deciduous forest biome.

Hubbard Brook -- Sizable reserve in New Hampshire's White Mountains, also focused on eastern deciduous forest setting.

Jornada LTER -- Project focused on the impact of desertifcation on soil resources -- and the consequent effect on ecosystem function -- across the Chihuahuan desert, a huge swath stretching from south-central New Mexico to the Mexican state of Zacatecas.

Kellogg Biological Station LTER -- Focuses on long-term research in ecological and biodiversity impacts of row crop agriculture.

Konza Prairie LTER Program -- Experiments and observations on the effects of fire, grazing, climate, and other variables on a tallgrass prarie ecosystem.

Luquillo Experimental Forest LTER -- Experimental rain-forest study near San Juan, Puerto Rico.

McMurdo Dry Valleys LTER -- Study of polar desert oases at McMurdo Station, Antarctica.

Niwot Ridge LTER -- Long-term experiments on the ecology of Alpine tundra, conducted at elevations of more than 3 km. Site includes a nifty, user-controlable Webcam, "Tundra-Cam".

North Temperate Lakes LTER -- Ecological research project near Madison, Wisconsin, aimed at study of northern temperate lakes in glacial landscapes in urban, agricultural and forested watersheds.

Palmer Station -- Antarctic LTER project built around marine ecology of the Southern Ocean.

Plum Island Ecosystems LTER -- Nutrient loading and other watershed issues in a coastal estuarine environment.

Santa Barbara Coastal Ecosystem LTER -- Research on long-term ecological phenomena at the land-ocean margin.

Sevilleta LTER Project -- Undertaking in New Mexico's central Rio Grande basin that involves "the characterization of ecological responses to climate dynamics and related disturbances along environmental gradients at multiple scales." Site includes an extremely cool (and, at a whopping 18 MB, huge) downloadable MPEG "flyover" of the study area compiled from satellite imagery.

Shortgrass Steppe LTER -- Long-term project emphasizing the hydrologic cycle, plant and animal population dynamics, soil responses to long-term cattle grazing, and a variety of other ecological issues in the North American semiarid Great Plains.

Virginia Coast Reserve LTER -- Long-term ecological patterns in a coastal barrier island system.

he spectacular success of the U.S. LTER has prompted development of long-term ecological research and monitoring efforts in other countries, confederated under a loosely organized International Long-Term Ecological Research (ILTER) network that includes the U.S. initiative. Following are some good entry points toward learning more about this worldwide effort.

GTOS Terrestrial Ecosystem Monitoring Sites (TEMS)

Extremely well-executed site from the Global Terrestrial Observing System (GTOS) of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organizaton (FAO). At the heart of the site is a rich database including metadata about international long-term research and monitoring locations ("T.Sites" in the Web site's argot); the site also provides targeted information about current and future research organized by environmental variable and ecological region. Much of the site is still under construction, but in general this is a great place to start exploring.

The International Long-Term Ecological Research Network

Umbrella page (unfortunately not especially up-to-date) encompassing various worldwide organizations doing long-term ecological research. Includes a useful table of projects organized by biome and information about international LTER meetings.

Selected ILTER Network Sites

Here are some of the better-developed Web pages out there for LTER projects in specific countries:

Programa de Pesquisas Ecológicas de Longa Duração -- Brazillian site, available in Portuguese and English, that includes a clickable map pointing to further information about the country's nine LTER sites.

Ecological Monitoring and Assessment Network -- Appealing site (in English and French) from Environment Canada; includes a useful library of reports and newsletters on Canadian long-term monitoring efforts.

Chinese Ecosystem Research Network -- Gateway (in Chinese and English to LTER projects in China. (Many of the links on the English home page point to pages in Chinese.)

Costa Rican Network for Long Term Ecological Research -- Project of the 64-institution Organization for Tropical Studies. Site includes a page of links to Web pages for four of the five LTER projects in the country.

Czech Long-Term Ecological Research -- English-language review of the seven LTER sites in the Czech Republic.

Korea Long-Term Ecological Research Network -- Headquarters Web site of the South Korean LTER project.

UK Environmental Change Network -- World-class British site providing information about 54 research areas in the United Kingdom.

cological research in general, and long-term ecological study in particular, faces much the same challenge as other data-rich disciplines such as molecular biology: The need to tie together diverse data sets encompassing broad geographical areas and with wide temporal scope. Following are some Web resources related to ecological data, particularly of the time series variety. (For additional resources, check out the Web supplement to our 29 September 2000 special issue on Bioinformatics for Biodiversity.)

The Global Population Dynamics Database

Impressive site, described in a Viewpoint article by Inchuasti and Halley, that draws together time series data on population dynamics for more than 1800 animal species.

National Biological Information Infrastructure

Superb, well-stocked Web clearinghouse for data and information on North American biological resources.

National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis

U.C. Santa Barbara-based research center whose goals include "organiz[ing] and synthesiz[ing] ecological information in a manner useful to researchers, resource managers, and policy makers addressing important environmental issues."

Ecoinformatics.org

Valuable resource (sponsored by the U.S. LTER program and NCEAS) related to management of online data and information for ecologists. Particularly interesting is a page of publications relevant to ecological informatics, including a useful 1998 study, Data and Information Management in the Ecological Sciences: A Resource Guide.

WWW Server for Ecological Modeling

German-based home of the Register of Ecological Models, an online database for mathematical models of ecology, and ESCOBAS, a project that seeks to develop a standardized system for documenting such models.

Report of the ESA Committee on the Future of Long-Term Ecological Data (FLED)

Mid-1990s report by a committee of the Ecological Society of America, laying out many of the specific challenges and opportunities posed by long-term ecological data in a digital age.

uch of the interesting work that has sprung from long-term ecological research efforts deals with the ups and downs of species populations, over a variety of time scales. The following three Web sites, all compiled by university faculty or research scientists, provide some additional context on population ecology and population dynamics.

Quantitative Population Ecology

From Alexei Sharov, Department of Entomology, University of Virginia.

Understanding Population Dynamics

From David Blackstone, Department of Biology, University of York.

Population Dynamics

From W. Daniel Edge, Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, Oregon State University.

he ultimate goal of long-term ecological study, of course, is not only understanding the past and present, but also predicting what effect today's changes might have on tomorrow's ecosystems -- a view forefully presented in a Viewpoint by Clark et al. in Science's 27 July 2001 special issue. We close this selection of Web sites with a few that have special relevance to ecological forecasting efforts.

Grand Challenges in the Environmental Sciences

Useful and interesting report from the National Research Council that attempts to "offer a judgment regarding the most important environmental research challenges of the next generation." Available for online viewing through the Open Books program of the National Academy Press.

U.S. Global Change Research Program

Headquarters for the interagency program includes a wealth of information relevant to the planet's ecological future. Among the offerings are a variety of resources on the impact of global change on the biology and biogeochemistry of ecosystems, and a report pitched at the general public, Climate Change Impacts on the United States: The Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change, that includes a very accessible treatment of ecosystems in the future.

Global Change and Terrestrial Ecosystems (GCTE)

Handsome Web site of an International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP) project that has as one of its objectives "to predict the effects of changes in climate, atmospheric composition, and land use on terrestrial ecosystems"

Resources for the Future

Unusually rich online trove maintained by the nonprofit research organization.

Millennium Ecosystem Assessment

Four-year project, launched 5 June 2001, to "examine the processes that support life on earth like the world's grasslands, forests, rivers and lakes, farmlands, and oceans."

International Ecosystem Assessment

Policy Forum published in Science in 1999, laying out the case for the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment.

The Future of Evolution

Fascinating collection of papers, published in the 8 May 2000 issue of PNAS, from a 2000 colloquium on the potential long-term ecological and evolutionary impacts -- and policy implications -- of current trends in habitat and biodiversity loss.