LTERs Celebrate 40 Years of Ecological Research

By Emily Greenhalgh From pollution to climate change—in order to understand how ecosystems are affected by changes in their environment, scientists need long-term observations. This was the idea behind the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Long-Term Ecological Research Network (LTER), which is celebrating its fortieth anniversary this year. In 1980, the NSF launched the LTER program