Environment

taking the
long view
N
SF is supporting research to learn
how the diverse parts of our environ-
ment—from individual species to
ecosystems to global weather
patterns—interact to form the world
around us. A better understanding
of the give-and-take between organ-
isms and the environment is critical
to the search for knowledge as well
as for a healthy planet.
Although humans have been fascinated by the relationship
between organisms and their environment since the days of Aristotle, ecology as a separate
scientific discipline is only about a century old. Today the field is closely aligned in many minds
with concerns about pollution and species extinction. The National Science Foundation began
to make a serious investment in ecological research in the 1960s and in 1980 launched its
pioneering Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) program. Usually, researchers receive grants
to conduct three-year studies that ask a relatively narrow range of questions. But with the LTER
program, NSF has recognized that real understanding of the complex interplay among plants,
animals, and the environment requires a longer and broader view. Currently more than 1,000
researchers are working at twenty-four ecologically distinct LTER sites, where studies often last
for decades. The questions these NSF-funded ecologists are posing, and the answers they’re
getting, are emblematic of a maturing and vital discipline.
The Big Picture
A temperate coniferous forest teeming with hem-
locks, red cedar, and firs. An Arctic tundra dotted
with icy lakes and headwater streams. An East
Coast city interlaced with deciduous trees, houses,
and parks. A tallgrass prairie. A tropical rainforest.
A coastal estuary. A fiery desert.
For every ecological domain on Earth, there
seems to be an LTER site devoted to unmasking
its secrets. Each location hosts an average of
eighteen different principal investigators—often
affiliated with nearby universities—who head up
various studies that last anywhere from the few
years it may take a graduate student to complete
her thesis to the decades needed to understand
the ongoing effects of, say, fire on the prairie.
The sites themselves are much larger than the
average experimental plot, ranging in size from the
3,000 acres under continuous study at the Harvard
Forest LTER in Petersham, Massachusetts, to the
5 million acres that make up the Central Arizona/
Phoenix site.
The rationale behind the LTER program is based
on conclusions that environmental scientists
reached by the end of the 1970s. One conclusion
is that changes in many of the most important
ecological processes, such as nutrient levels in the
soil, occur slowly. Relatively rare events such as Although each site boasts its own array of Without periodic fire, the tallgrass
flash floods have a major impact on an ecosystem, studies designed for that particular ecological prairies of central North America would
but they can only be properly studied if researchers system, all studies undertaken at an LTER site disappear into a woodland/shrub habitat.
At the NSF-funded Konza Prairie LTER
have, in effect, anticipated the occurrences with must address one or more of what ecologist
site in Kansas, researchers seek to under-
ongoing studies. Another conclusion is that many Steward Pickett, project director for the Baltimore
stand the interplay of prairie and fire
ecological processes vary greatly from year to year; LTER, calls “the holy commandments of LTER.” by subjecting sixty experimental plots to
only a long-term view can discern inherent patterns. These commandments come in the form of five short- and long-term intervals of burning.
Finally, the kind of long-term, multidisciplinar y questions that are fundamental to how any eco-
databases established by LTER researchers are system functions: What controls the growth of
critical for providing a context in which shorter- plants? What controls the populations of plants
term studies can be understood. and animals? What happens to the organic mat-
ter that plants produce? What controls the flow
of nutrients and water in the system? How do
disturbances affect the system?

Environment — 105
 While these five themes provide focus to indi-
vidual LTER studies, they also allow researchers
from ver y different locales to do an “apples-to-
apples” comparison of their data so that even
larger lessons can be learned. Clues to how an
ecosystem functions are more readily apparent
when scientists can compare how the same
process works across ecologically diverse sites. An Ecological Solution to a Medical Mystery
For example, the LTER program allows researchers When young, other wise healthy people in the
to obser ve how nutrients travel through two dif- remote Four Corners area of Arizona and New
ferent types of grasslands and how grasslands Mexico began dying of a mysterious acute respi-
differ from forests in terms of nutrient flow. To ratory disease in the spring of 1993, people were
help make these kinds of comparisons, repre- scared. Those who caught the disease got very
sentatives from each LTER site meet formally sick, very quickly. Eventually twenty people died.
twice a year and also communicate regularly via At the time, some wondered if the disease was
email and the LTER program’s Web site. a biological warfare agent, a military experiment
Key to the success of the LTER approach, of gone bad.
course, are long-term funding and large-scale areas. The Atlanta-based U.S. Centers for Disease
With the proper time and space, “you can do riskier Control and Prevention (CDC) sent scientists to the
experiments,” says NSF’s LTER program director region to investigate. Tests of the victims’ blood
Scott Collins, “or you can do experiments that yielded a surprising result: the people had become
take a long time to have an effect, or big experi- infected with a previously undetected kind of
ments that require a lot of space, or ones that hantavirus. The hantavirus causes Hantavirus
need a certain kind of team.” Pulmonary Syndrome, a serious respiratory illness
Long-term studies also provide an increasingly that can be fatal.
important baseline of how the environment works— Named after the Hantaan River in Korea, han-
a baseline against which crucial management taviruses were known to spread from rodents to
decisions can be measured. “As the sites are humans but until the Four Corners outbreak, the
studied longer,” Collins says, “their value increases microbes had only been seen in Asia and Europe.
[because] the findings can be applied to policy Moving quickly, CDC investigators asked biologists
and conservation issues.” at the University of New Mexico for help in collect-
What follows is a brief tour through just a few ing rodents and insects around the homes of
of the LTER sites that are fulfilling the promise of people who had gotten sick. A likely suspect soon
long-term, large-scale environmental research. appeared when the infection popped up in one
Studies at these sites have unraveled human health particular kind of mouse.
problems, helped to clean up the air, changed how “The CDC called us and asked, ‘What mouse
forests are managed, exposed the effects of is this?’,” says University of New Mexico mammol-
global change, and revealed how cities interact ogist and museum curator Terry Yates, who also
with their surrounding environment. ser ves as co-principal investigator at the NSF-
funded Sevilleta LTER site—so-called because the
site’s 230,000 acres are located within the
Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge, about an hour

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south of Albuquerque. Yates told the CDC that the
infected animal was a deer mouse, a close rela-
tive of the type of Old World mice that also carry
hantaviruses and that transmit the disease through
their droppings and urine.
Now the CDC knew what the disease was and
how it was transmitted. But the investigators still
didn’t know why a disease carried by a common
animal like the deer mouse seemed to be cropping
up for the first time in North America. For answers, Their conclusion? The hantavirus outbreak could As part of the NSF-supported LTER project
the CDC turned to what Sevilleta researcher Robert be blamed on El Niño, a periodic pattern of change in metropolitan Phoenix, Arizona State
Parmenter calls “a bunch of rat trappers” who had in the global circulation of oceans and atmosphere. University graduate student Jennifer
Edmonds collects water samples at the
been working on matters entirely unrelated to Parmenter’s team saw in their long-term data that
Salt River, east of Phoenix. The samples
medical science at Sevilleta even before the site massive rains associated with the 1991–92 El Niño
will be tested for nutrients and major
was admitted to NSF’s LTER network in 1988. had substantially boosted plant productivity in the ions as part of a project that helps
The major research question at the Sevilleta Sevilleta after several years of drought. A banner researchers to better understand the
LTER site was this: How do the Sevilleta’s four year for plants was followed by a banner year for relationship between urbanization and
major ecosystems (grassland, woodland, desert, rodents. Rodent populations during the fall of 1992 ecological conditions.
and shrub steppe) respond to short-term and long- and spring of 1993 surged as much as twenty
term fluctuations in climate? One way to address times higher in some places as compared to pre-
that question was to measure the population fluc- vious years. The same phenomenon likely occurred
tuations of plants and animals. Climate changes in the nearby Four Corners region. More mice
affect vegetation, which in turn affects the amount meant that more humans stood a greater chance
and kind of food available to animals. Keeping track of exposure to infected rodents as the people
of the rodent populations was just one part of a moved among their barns and outhouses and did
multi-investigator project—but it turned out to be their spring cleaning of cabins and trailers.
a crucial part of the CDC investigation. Data from the Sevilleta also helped to determine
Parmenter, who directs the Sevilleta Field that the deadly hantavirus wasn’t new to New
Research Station, recalls being told by the CDC Mexico. Yates and his colleagues tested tissue
that “I could take all the time I wanted so long samples collected from rodents prior to 1993 and
as [the rodent report] was ready by next Tuesday.”
He and his team of students and fellow professors
“were gung-ho excited—working up the data, doing
the analyses just as fast at we could.”

Environment — 107
detected evidence of hantavirus. In other words,
the virus had been in rodents all along—it was the
change in climatic conditions that triggered the
fatal outbreak in humans. Such knowledge may
have helped save lives in 1998, when a particular-
ly active El Niño event prompted health authorities
to warn residents of the American Southwest to
be careful when entering areas favored by mice.
The events of 1993 continue to be felt directly at “The approach we use is called the small
the Sevilleta LTER, which now counts among its watershed approach,” says Charles Driscoll, an
studies one that aims to identify the ways in environmental engineer at Syracuse University in
which hantavirus is spread from rodent to rodent. Syracuse, New York, and a principal investigator
Yates says, “This is a classic example of basic for the Hubbard Brook LTER. A watershed is the
research done for totally different reasons com- whole area drained by a particular stream and its
ing to the rescue when a new problem arises.” tributaries. The watersheds at Hubbard Brook span
mountain valleys from ridgeline to ridgeline, encom-
Contributing to a Cleaner World passing the hillsides and the tributaries that drain
LTER researchers are both medical and environ- into the streams on the valley floor. Researchers
mental detectives. Using many of the same skills learn about the effects of both human and natural
that helped determine the cause of the hantavirus, disturbances by measuring and comparing the
these scientists are conducting studies that deter- transport of materials, such as water and nutrients,
mine how pollution affects ecosystems. The results in and out of different watersheds.
of these investigations are helping to create a The small watershed approach at Hubbard Brook
healthier environment. has proven crucial to understanding the effects of
A case in point is the Hubbard Brook Experi- acid rain. The term “acid rain” describes precipi-
mental Forest, home to the longest continually tation of any kind that contains acids, largely
operating ecosystem study in the United States. sulfuric and nitric acids. Natural processes release
In 1955, scientists began research on the 8,000- sulfur and nitrogen compounds into the air, where
acre site in New Hampshire’s White Mountain they react with water vapor to form acids. By burn-
National Forest to figure out what makes a for- ing gasoline, coal, and oil, humans are responsible
est tick. NSF began funding research at the site for releasing even greater amounts of sulfur and
in the 1960s; Hubbard Brook joined the LTER nitrogen compounds, creating snow and rain that
network in 1987. can carry life-stunting levels of acids into waterways
The main research aim at Hubbard Brook is and forests. By the 1970s, numerous lakes and
suitably large scale: By measuring all the chemical streams in the heavily industrialized Nor thern
energy and nutrients that enter and leave this Hemisphere became inhospitable to fish and other
experimental site, researchers hope to learn what organisms. The link to forest degradation has been
makes a forest, a forest. harder to prove, but in Europe people have coined
a new word—Waldsterben—to describe the kind
of “forest death” thought to be caused by too
much acid rain.

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The Birth of Long-Term Ecological Research
Today most of us take it for granted gram’s critics charged that the IBP had only limited applicability to the
that the Earth’s diverse systems, focus was too vague and unwieldy. practical problems of environmental
from forests, grasslands, and deserts Amid the controversy, NSF decided management. Attention began to
to the oceans and the atmosphere, that the major aspect of the U.S. turn to smaller-scale integrated pro-
are interconnected. But in the early program would be large-scale pro- jects such as the Hubbard Brook
1960s, thinking about the world as jects featuring new, multidisciplinary Ecosystem Study, which NSF had
a set of interacting systems was a research—specifically, systems ecol- been funding since 1963, even
“totally revolutionary concept,” says ogy, the analysis of ecosystems by before IBP. Results from Hubbard
Joann Roskoski of NSF’s Division of means of computer modeling, a strik- Brook, such as being able to predict
Environmental Biology. At the time, ingly new approach at the time. A how forests recover from clear-cut-
researchers took what the late influ- total of five different “biomes” were ting and the discovery of acid rain
ential ecologist Tom Callahan called studied between 1968 and 1974: in North America, demonstrated
a “critter-by-critter” approach, focus- western coniferous forests, eastern the power of taking an ecosystem
ing on single species. deciduous forests, grasslands, tun- approach to understanding the envi-
“That’s fine as far as it goes,” dra, and desert. ronment, but over a longer time scale
Callahan said, “but it doesn’t say The IBP helped to consolidate than was typical of IBP projects.
much about the bigger picture.” ecosystem ecology; resulted in a Six years after the IBP ended,
And the bigger picture is what permanent increase in funding for NSF launched its Long-Term
the 1960s environmental movement the field; stimulated the use of com- Ecological Research (LTER) program,
was all about. During this decade, puter modeling in ecology; produced today’s new standard for excellence
NSF helped move ecology to sci- smaller-scale models of ecological in environmental science. So suc-
ence’s center stage by serving as systems; and trained a generation cessful have LTER researchers been
the primary U.S. representative in of researchers. “If you now look at that in 1993 an international LTER
the International Biological Program a lot of the leadership in American program was launched after a meet-
(IBP). The IBP, which was approved ecology today, these folks cut their ing hosted by the U.S. LTER network.
by the International Union of teeth on IBP,” says the University of The international LTER effort now
Biological Sciences and the Tennessee’s Frank Harris, who was includes seventeen countries (with
International Council of Scientific NSF program director for ecosystem thirteen more in the wings), all of
Unions, was a controversial effort studies in 1980. whom support scientific programs
to coordinate a series of ecological Still, researchers and policymak- or networks that focus on ecological
projects conducted by scientific com- ers came to realize that huge pro- research over long temporal and
munities around the world. The pro- jects such as the IBP ultimately large spatial scales.
 “A lot of people thought that acid rain changes
sur face waters, but not the soil,” says Likens,
director of the Institute of Ecosystem Studies in
Millbrook, New York, and lead author of the 1996
Hubbard Brook study. “This was one of the first
studies to clearly demonstrate the substantial
effects of acid rain on soil.”
As it turned out, numerous minerals essential
to life, including calcium and magnesium, dissolve
more readily in highly acidic water. Thirty years of
Hubbard Brook data on the chemical composition
of soil, rain, and stream water showed that acid
rain was and is seriously leaching calcium and
magnesium from the forest soil—as rain falls,
it reacts with soil minerals and washes them into
the streams.
Can anything be done to bolster the soil’s
Timothy Katz, site manager for the NSF- Acid rain in North America was first documented resistance to acid rain? In 1999, Hubbard Brook
funded North Temperate Lakes LTER in in 1972 by Gene E. Likens, F. Herbert Bormann, researchers set out to address this question by
Wisconsin, samples open-water fishes and Noye M. Johnson at Hubbard Brook. Because sending up helicopters to drop a load of calcium
with a vertical gill net. Among the wealth
Hubbard Brook researchers using the small water- pellets on a 30-acre watershed that, like the rest
of long-term data gathered from the
shed approach had long been monitoring the of the forest, has been depleted of calcium over
lakes is evidence of time lags in how
“invaders” affect lake communities.
quality, not just quantity, of precipitation, they could the years.
For example, in Sparkling Lake a kind tell that rainwater wasn’t quite what it used to be “We’re going to look at the trees, the herbaceous
of trout called cisco went extinct sixteen and that the acid problem was getting worse. plants, how salamanders respond, how microbes
years after smelt found their way in. Their work was important in the establishment of respond, and how aquatic organisms respond,”
the National Acid Precipitation Assessment Program Driscoll says. In a few years, the researchers may
and the passage of the landmark Clean Air Act be able to repor t whether calcium enrichment
Amendments in 1990, which mandated reductions shows any signs of helping to restore damaged
in sulfur dioxide emissions from power plants. soil. Such a finding would be welcome news to
Although precipitation over the United States New Englanders in the tourism and maple sugar
is not quite as acidic as it was in 1972, forests industries, where concern is high about whether
are still showing worrisome signs of decline. A calcium levels in the soil have something to do
1996 Hubbard Brook study determined at least with the notable decline in the region’s sugar
one reason why: Acid rain ravages the soil’s ability maple trees. A full understanding of calcium’s role
to support plant life. in the environment will take longer. That’s why
Driscoll says the new study—like most Hubbard
Brook studies—will continue “not just for a few
months, but for fifty years.”
Says Driscoll, “Once we start, we don’t quit.”

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Solving the Biocomplexity Puzzle
Studying only one piece of the envi- and humans are altering these mation is in so many different forms
ronment—even one as big as an LTER systems at an unprecedented rate,” and formats and many different places,
site—provides only partial understand- says NCEAS Deputy Director Sandy it is not accessible or useful.”
ing of how the world works. Such is Andelman. “We need to do a better Hence the need for something like
the nature of what NSF Director Rita job of harnessing the scientific infor- the NCEAS, which is collaborating with
Colwell calls “biocomplexity.” mation that’s relevant to those sys- the San Diego Supercomputing Center
Eventually, all the pieces will need to tems and putting it in a useable form.” and the LTER program to come up
conjoin in order to solve the puzzle. But gathering and integrating such with the necessary advanced com-
One would-be puzzle master is information is a daunting task. There puting tools. NCEAS is also develop-
the NSF-funded National Center for is no central repository in which eco- ing a set of desktop computer tools
Ecological Analysis and Synthesis logical scientists can store their data. that will allow researchers to enter
(NCEAS) at the University of Cali- Most studies are conducted by and catalog their data into the net-
fornia in Santa Barbara. NSF helped individual researchers or small teams work using standardized data dictio-
create NCEAS to organize and ana- working on specific small, short-term naries. Eventually, researchers thou-
lyze ecological information from all projects. Since each project is sands of miles apart will be able to
over the globe, including sites within slightly different, each data set is look at each other’s data with just a
NSF’s Long-Term Ecological Research slightly different. few clicks of the mouse.
(LTER) program. The center does not “Ecological data come in all kinds “If people knew that their data
collect new data itself; instead, of shapes and forms,” Andelman says. could contribute to a larger question,
NCEAS’ job is to integrate existing She adds that, in ecology, “There is most would happily make a little extra
information so that the information is not a strong culture of multi-investigator, effort to put their data into a more
more useful for researchers, resource integrated planning of research . . . . useful format,” Andelman says. “But
managers, and policymakers who are Ecology and other related disciplines there hasn’t been that framework in
tackling environmental issues. have amassed vast stores of relevant place.” And now, thanks to NSF,
“Natural systems are complex, information, but because this infor- there will be.
Counting the Blessings of Biodiversity
In addition to pollution, species extinction ranks
high as a concern among those interested in how
ecosystems function. According to the fossil record,
several thousand plants and animals have disap-
peared over the last ten million years; during the
time dinosaurs were alive, one species disappeared Actually, no one sat much. The researchers,
about every one to ten thousand years. But as the aided by an army of undergraduates, have toiled
human population has grown, so has the rate of ever since to meticulously weed the 100-square-
extinction—researchers now conservatively esti- foot plots of anything that didn’t belong to what
mate that species are dying out at the dramatic each plot was designed to contain, be it brown-eyed
rate of one a day. susans, bunch clover, or yarrow. A critical aspect
The assumption, of course, is that this can’t of the study was that researchers randomly
be good. More than a century ago, Charles Darwin selected which species went into which plots.
first suggested that more species would make an This kept the focus on the number rather than
ecosystem more productive. But researchers have the type of species.
struggled to test the notion rigorously, not just in Why do more species make for a merrier
the lab but in the field. It wasn’t until 1996 that ecosystem? Tilman has found that a diverse plant
anyone had real evidence that biodiversity—sheer community uses the available energy resources
numbers of different species—is critical to the more efficiently.
planet’s well-being. “Each species differs from others in a variety
In an experiment that other ecologists have of traits,” says Tilman. “Some have high water
described as “brilliant” and “a first,” University requirements and grow well during the cool part
of Minnesota ecologist David Tilman and other of the year. Others grow well when it’s really warm
researchers at the Cedar Creek Natural Histor y and dry. Each one in the system does what it’s
Area—an NSF-funded LTER site since 1982— good at, if you will, but there’s always something
demonstrated that plant communities with the left to be done.” That is, conditions that are less
greatest biodiversity yielded the greatest total than hospitable to some species will be readily
plant growth year to year. These plant communities exploited by others, leading to more lush growth
also were much more likely to hang on to essen- overall. These processes, says Tilman, also explain
tial nutrients that might other wise have been why so many species can coexist in nature.
leached from the soil. “It wasn’t until we knew how rapidly species
Tilman’s team approached the problem by were going extinct that this issue really came to
constructing 147 miniature prairies within a sec- the forefront,” says Tilman. Still, more work needs
tion of the 5,500-acre experimental reserve at to be done before biodiversity’s role in a healthy
Cedar Creek, and planting each one with anywhere ecosystem can be unequivocally celebrated. That’s
from one to twenty-four species. The burning, why Tilman and other Cedar Creek researchers have
plowing, and planting were done by the spring of added a second experiment to the mix, this time
1994. Then the researchers sat back to see which using more than three hundred bigger plots, each
plots would end up doing best. about the size of an average suburban backyard.
The extra area should allow for a better under-
standing of how, for example, plots with different
numbers of species handle insects and disease.

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 “Nobody’s ever done what they’ve done,” says
Samuel McNaughton, an ecosystem ecologist at
Syracuse University in New York. “It’s an enormous
amount of work. Tilman would not have been
able to do this without NSF funding through the
LTER program.”

Keeping Up with Global Change

From a focus on plant communities to a broader
look at global climate change, LTER research is
revealing how the components of our environ-
ment interact.
Alber t Einstein once said that chance favors
the prepared mind. So, too, are LTER scientists
uniquely prepared to learn from seemingly chance
fluctuations in global climate—what LTER program The number of lakes, their different sizes An aerial view of a biodiversity experi-
head Scott Collins calls “the surprise years.” (ranging from quar ter-acre bogs to 3,500-acre ment at the NSF-supported Cedar Creek
A good illustration of this can be found among behemoths), and their distribution from lower to Natural History Area in Minnesota.
Researchers here have shown that plant
the scores of lakes that make up the NSF-funded higher elevations, allowed Kathy Webster, then a
communities with the largest variety of
North Temperate Lakes (NTL) LTER site in Wisconsin. doctoral student, and other NTL researchers in
species exhibit the greatest total plant
A member of the network since the LTER program’s the late 1980s to conduct one of the first and growth, one sign of a robust environment.
star t in 1980, the NTL site is managed by most informative field studies of how lakes
researchers at the University of Wisconsin at respond to drought.
Madison. The NTL LTER includes two field stations: Year in, year out since 1981, NTL researchers
one in the Yahara Lake District of southern have measured the lakes’ chemical composition,
Wisconsin and the other—called the Trout Lake tracking fluctuations in calcium, magnesium,
Station—in the state’s northern highlands. While alkalinity, and other factors. These persistent
the area boasts hundreds of lakes that are measurements paid off in the late 1980s, when
amenable to study, the sites’ principal investiga- the upper Midwest was hit by a major drought.
tors have chosen seven to consistently monitor “We were able to look at our lakes pre-drought,
over the long haul. during the drought, and after the drought,” says
If researchers investigate only one lake, they Kratz. The results were surprising: Although all of
don’t know whether their findings are unique to the lakes lost water, only those lakes positioned
that lake, says University of Wisconsin limnologist higher in the landscape lost significant amounts
Timothy Kratz, a principal investigator for the of calcium, an essential nutrient for all organisms.
NTL LTER. Studying many lakes exposes patterns The effect was all the more striking because the
and commonalities that are visible only when elevation difference between the highest and low-
researchers investigate environmental conditions est study lakes was only about 33 feet.
over a broad region. The seven lakes of the NTL
LTER were chosen because of their representative
variety in size and location.

Environment — 113
 What could explain the different level of calcium
loss? Groundwater, suggests Kratz. All of the lakes
in the study are fed by groundwater seeping
through the rocky soil. This groundwater carries
with it an abundance of critical minerals, including
calcium. But the drought caused the groundwater
table to fall below the higher lakes, essentially
shutting off their mineral supply. Cityscapes Are Landscapes, Too
In a prolonged drought, says Kratz, lakes in Not all LTER sites are located in remote, rural
higher elevations might become calcium deficient, areas. In 1997, NSF added two sites to the net-
causing a cascade of biotic effects. Animals such work specifically to examine human-dominated
as snails and crayfish would be in trouble, since ecosystems—in other words, cities. One site is
they require calcium to make their shells. In turn, centered in Baltimore, Mar yland, the other in
fish that eat snails would find it harder to get Phoenix, Arizona.
enough food. The higher lakes might also become The Central Arizona/Phoenix (CAP) site fans out
more susceptible than their low-lying counterparts to encompass nearly five million acres of Maricopa
to the effects of acid rain, since the calcium and County. While much of the site’s study area is
other minerals from groundwater can counteract urbanized, some portions are still agricultural field
the deleterious effects of acid precipitation. or desert, and there are also a few nature reserves.
If changes in the world’s overall climate result CAP researchers are in the early stages of laying
in droughts that become more frequent—as some the groundwork for long-term studies at the site.
researchers predict with the advent of global For one thing, they’re busy identifying two hundred
warming—the chemistr y of these two types of sampling sites that will encompass the city, the
lakes will start to diverge. Data of the kind gath- urban fringe, and enough spots on the very outer
ered at the North Temperate Lakes LTER should edge to ensure that some portion of the site will
help both scientists and policymakers predict and remain desert for the next thirty years.
cope with the environmental consequences of “One of our exciting challenges will be to take
global climate change. those very standard common ecological measures
“We didn’t know the particular event of inter- that people use in the forest and desert and every-
est would be a drought,” Kratz says. “But we had where else, and say, well, is there an equivalent
in place a system of measurements that would way to look at how the city operates?” says
allow us to analyze the situation—whatever the Charles Redman, Arizona State University arche-
event was.” ologist and co-director of the CAP-LTER. To tackle
that challenge, Redman and co-director Nancy
Grimm work with a research team that includes
ecologists, geographers, remote sensing special-
ists, sociologists, hydrologists, and urban planners.
As a framework for their foray into the ecology
of a city, the researchers are adopting a popular
and relatively new ecological perspective that
recognizes that rather than being uniform, an eco-
system is patchy, rather like a quilt. For example,

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Wanted: A Complete Catalog
of Creatures and Plants
Chytrids are not something people taxonomy—the science of species clas- One way the National Science
generally worry about. Yet this little- sification—has come to seem faintly Foundation is trying to address the
known group of fungi made news in antiquated, even though biological problem is through its Partnerships for
1998 when it was linked with a rash research collections “remain the ulti- Enhancing Expertise in Taxonomy (PEET)
of frog deaths in Australia and Panama. mate source of knowledge about the program. PEET funds systematic biolo-
It had taken frog researchers sever- identity, relationships, and properties gists working to identify understudied
al years to locate a chytrid specialist of the species with which we share groups like the chytrids. In fact, Powell
capable of identifying the deadly fun- the Earth,” according to Stephen and her colleagues are now working
gus, and even then the experts were Blackmore, chair of the Systematics under a PEET grant to train at least
surprised. “We didn’t know that any Forum in the United Kingdom, who three new Ph.D.s in the systematic
[chytrids] were parasites of vertebrates,” wrote about the problem in 1997 for biology of chytrids. Besides training
says Martha Powell, a chytrid special- the journal Science. the next generation of systematists,
ist at the University of Alabama. But even as “the inescapable need PEET projects are also making what is
Chytrids aren’t alone in being poorly to know more about the diversity of life known about these species more wide-
classified. Only about 1.5 million species on Earth remains largely unmet,” wrote ly available through the development
have been identified so far out of the Blackmore, “declining funds are limiting of Web-accessible databases that con-
13 million or so thought currently to the ability of institutes around the world tain information such as identification
exist (some estimates of the overall to respond . . . .” As of 1996, there keys, photographs, distribution maps,
number are closer to 30 million). The were only about 7,000 systematists in and DNA sequences.
gargantuan challenge of collecting the world, a workforce that Blackmore “Systematists,” wrote Blackmore,
and describing examples of all these and others deem “clearly inadequate.” “hold the key to providing knowledge
unknown species falls to a steadily Says James Rodman, NSF program about biodiversity.” Knowing more about
shrinking pool of scientists known as director for systematics, “There are how the world functions requires learn-
systematic biologists. With the advent very few people studying the obscure ing more about each of the world’s
of high-tech molecular techniques for groups” of species and many of those parts, however small.
studying evolutionary relationships, experts are beginning to retire.
 CAP researchers have gathered information
about how land use in the Phoenix region changed
from the early 1900s until today. The team has
found that as the area became more urban, the
patches in a grassland might be recognized as patches became smaller and more regularly
areas that burned last year, areas that burned shaped. In the new millennium, the scientists want
five years ago, and burned areas where bison are to see how this kind of more orderly patchiness
now grazing. Smaller patches exist within the affects ecological processes. For example,
larger patches: The bison might graze more heavily researchers would like to know how insects and
in some sections of the burned area than others, other small animals move across the landscape,
for example. There are patches of wildflowers, and how storm runoff carries away nutrients across
patches where bison have wallowed, and patches the various patches, whether concrete or soil.
where manure piles have enriched the soil. Each Grimm thinks that the patch dynamics model
time ecologists look closely at one type of patch, will help researchers integrate all the information
they can identify a mosaic of smaller patches that they collect about the rapidly changing Phoenix
make up that larger patch. And if they can figure metropolitan area. The model emphasizes linkages
out what the patches are, how the patches change between different levels and types of patches such
over time, and how the different types of patches that researchers can design studies to ask: How
affect one another, they might be able to figure might the actions of an individual eventually affect
out how the ecosystem functions as a whole. the ecology of a whole community-sized patch?
Anyone who has flown over an urban area and If someone sells an undisturbed piece of desert
looked at the gridlike mosaic below can imagine property to a developer, for example, the ecosys-
how easily cityscapes lend themselves to the tem will change. What kind of development is
hierarchical patch dynamics model. Still, it’s a new built—whether there is one house per acre or a
approach where cities are concerned, says Jianguo series of closely packed townhomes—will differ-
Wu, a landscape ecologist at Arizona State ently affect the ecological processes in the
University. And the patches within cities are new adjacent patches of remaining desert.
to ecologists. “Once the land use changes, the ecology
“You can see very large patches—the built-up changes,” says Wu, adding, “What is really
areas, the agricultural areas, the native deser t impor tant is the dynamics—the impact of this
areas,” he says of the Phoenix site. “But if you patchiness on the ecological, physical, hydrologi-
zoom in, you see smaller patches. Walk into cal, and socioeconomic processes of the city.”
downtown Phoenix. There are trees, parking
lots, concrete. They form a hierarchy of patches
with different content, sizes, shapes, and
other characteristics.”

116 — National Science Foundation

Long-Term Research: A Model for NSF’s Future
The LTER program has already demonstrated a
remarkable return on NSF’s investment. Thanks
to NSF-supported research, we now have a better
understanding of the complex interplay among And none too soon, according to Lubchenco.
plants, animals, people, and the environment. “We’re changing things faster than we understand
In February 2000, the National Science Board them,” she once said in a news interview. “We’re
(NSB), NSF’s policymaking body, released a report changing the world in ways that it’s never been
urging that NSF expand the LTER program and changed before, at faster rates and over larger
make the environment a “central focus” of its scales, and we don’t know the consequences.
research portfolio in the twenty-first century. It’s a massive experiment, and we don’t know
“Discoveries over the past decade or more have the outcome.”
revealed new linkages between the environment
and human health,” says Eamon Kelly, chair of the
National Science Board. “But just as we are begin-
ning to better understand these linkages, the rate
and scale of modifications to the environment are To Learn More
increasing. These alterations will present formi-
NSF Division of Environmental Biology
dable challenges in the new century—challenges Directorate for Biological Sciences
which we are now only minimally equipped to meet.” [Link]/bio/deb/[Link]
Preeminent ecologist Jane Lubchenco of Oregon NSF Global Change Programs
State University chaired the NSB Task Force on Directorate for Geosciences
[Link]/geo/egch/
the Environment, which was responsible for the
NSF Partnerships for Enhancing Expertise
report. “The LTER program is widely viewed as
in Taxonomy (PEET)
one of the outstanding successes of NSF,” says [Link]/~peet
Lubchenco, “and is the model for federal agencies U.S. Long-Term Ecological Research Network
as well as other countries for superb place-based [Link]
ecological sciences. [The program is] very lean, International Long-Term Ecological Research Network
very efficient, very productive.” [Link]
The LTER program’s success is one reason the Sevilleta LTER Project
task force recommended, among other things, that [Link]

NSF boost its spending on environmental research Hubbard Brook Ecosystem Study
[Link]/
by $1 billion over a five-year period beginning in
Cedar Creek Natural History Area
2001. That kind of financial commitment would
[Link]/
make environmental science and engineering one
North Temperate Lakes LTER
of the agency’s highest priorities. [Link]
Central Arizona-Phoenix LTER
[Link]
Environmental Science and Engineering for the 21st
Century: The Role of the National Science Foundation
National Science Board
[Link]/cgi-bin/getpub?nsb0022

Environment — 117