Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER)

The Long-Term Ecological Research network, LTER, is a set of field sites that maintain decades-long observations of ecosystems to detect slow change and rare events that short studies miss. The US LTER program was founded by the National Science Foundation in 1980 and now spans terrestrial, freshwater, and coastal and open-ocean sites, including the Palmer Antarctica and California Current marine sites. Each site collects standardized records of physical conditions, primary production, and community composition. The marine LTER series have documented multidecadal shifts in phytoplankton, krill, and ice-dependent species, supplying the long baselines that distinguish climate trends from year-to-year variability.