The geography of Puerto Rico consists of an archipelago located between the Caribbean Sea and the North Atlantic Ocean, east of Hispaniola, and west of the Virgin Islands and north of Venezuela. The main island of Puerto Rico is the smallest and most eastern of the Greater Antilles. With an area of 8,897 square kilometres (3,435 sq mi), it is the third largest island in the United States and the 82nd largest island in the world. Various smaller islands and cays, including Vieques, Culebra, Mona, Desecheo, and Caja de Muertos comprise the remainder of the archipelago with only Culebra and Vieques being inhabited year-round. Mona is uninhabited through large parts of the year except for employees of the Puerto Rico Department of Natural Resources.
Gene Elden Likens is an American limnologist and ecologist. He co-founded the Hubbard Brook Ecosystem Study at the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest in 1963, and founded the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, New York in 1983.
The University of Georgia Marine Institute (UGAMI) is a nearshore ecological and geological research station located on Sapelo Island off the coast of Georgia in the United States. This island lies between the Atlantic Ocean and a pristine salt marsh. A ferry takes passengers from Meridian to Sapelo Island. The Island has fewer than 100 full-time residents. The Institute was created in 1953 and is currently a unit of the University of Georgia's Office of Research. The Institute is 280 miles southeast of the University of Georgia's main campus in Athens. UGAMI is world-renowned for its research on coastal marine and estuarine ecosystems.
The Konza Prairie Biological Station is a 8,616-acre (3,487 ha) protected area of native tallgrass prairie in the Flint Hills of northeastern Kansas. "Konza" is an alternative name for the Kansa or Kaw Indians who inhabited this area until the mid-19th century. The Konza Prairie is owned by The Nature Conservancy and Kansas State University.
National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) is a large facility program operated by Battelle Memorial Institute and funded by the National Science Foundation. In full operation since 2019, NEON gathers and provides long-term, standardized data on ecological responses of the biosphere to changes in land use and climate, and on feedback with the geosphere, hydrosphere, and atmosphere. NEON is a continental-scale research platform for understanding how and why our ecosystems are changing.
The Virginia Coast Reserve Long-Term Ecological Research (VCR/LTER) project is funded by the National Science Foundation. The VCR/LTER project's research activities focus on the mosaic of transitions and steady-state systems that comprise the barrier-island/lagoon/mainland landscape of the Eastern Shore of Virginia. Research is conducted in mainland marshes, the lagoon system behind the barrier islands, and on the islands themselves, particularly Hog Island. The VCR/LTER began operation in 1987. It initially focused on geophysical controls on coastal ecosystems. In 1992-1994 it broadened that focus to address the concept of ecological state change, which was linked in 1994-2000 to relationships between free surfaces. More recent work (2000-2006), added a hypsometric perspective, which provides an alternate way of examining ecological patterns on the coastal landscape. It makes extensive use of the Virginia Coast Reserve of The Nature Conservancy.
The Cedar Creek Ecosystem Science Reserve is an ecological research site located primarily in East Bethel, Minnesota in the counties of Anoka and Isanti on the northern edge of the Minneapolis-Saint Paul metropolitan area.
Harvard Forest is an ecological research area of 3,000 acres (12 km2) owned and managed by Harvard University and located in Petersham, Massachusetts. The property, in operation since 1907, includes one of North America's oldest managed forests, educational and research facilities, a museum, and recreation trails. Harvard Forest is open to the public.
An experimental forest, or experimental range, as defined by the United States Forest Service, is "an area administered ... 'to provide for the research necessary for the management of the land.'"
The Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge is a protected area of New Mexico managed by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service as part of the National Wildlife Refuge System. It is located in the Chihuahuan Desert, 20 miles north of Socorro, New Mexico. The Rio Salado and the Rio Grande flow through the refuge.
DataONE is a network of interoperable data repositories facilitating data sharing, data discovery, and open science. Originally supported by $21.2 million in funding from the US National Science Foundation as one of the initial DataNet programs in 2009, funding was renewed in 2014 through 2020 with an additional $15 million. DataONE helps preserve, access, use, and reuse of multi-discipline scientific data through the construction of primary cyberinfrastructure and an education and outreach program. DataONE provides scientific data archiving for ecological and environmental data produced by scientists. DataONE's goal is to preserve and provide access to multi-scale, multi-discipline, and multi-national data. Users include scientists, ecosystem managers, policy makers, students, educators, librarians, and the public.
The South African Environmental Observation Network (SAEON) is a science network of people, organisations and, most importantly observation platforms, that perform Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) in South Africa and its surrounding oceans. The SAEON is of global importance as an innovative approach in ecology to understand environmental change and to determine the impact of anthropogenic forces at multiple scales but it is a remarkably complex challenge to statistically discern between ubiquitous natural variability and exogenous forcing. The SAEON constitutes a national government response to the World Summit on Sustainable Development (Earth Summit 2002) and is a component of the GEO (Group on Earth Observations). The SAEON has become the leader in environmental science and observation in South Africa, but has been criticised for taking a long time to establish, a situation which was inevitable in view of SAEON's multiple stakeholder corps. It has also been raised that the cost of replicated experimental treatments across SAEON sites will be high.
Michael Paul Nelson is an environmental scholar, writer, teacher, speaker, consultant, and Professor of environmental philosophy and ethics at Oregon State University. Nelson is also the philosopher in residence of the Isle Royale Wolf-Moose Project, a senior fellow with the Spring Creek Project for Ideas, Nature, and the Written word, and the co-founder and co-director of the Conservation Ethics Group. From 2012 to 2022 he served as the Lead Principal Investigator for the H.J. Andrews Long-Term Ecological Research Program and held the Ruth H. Spaniol Chair in Renewable Resources at Oregon State.
The H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest, commonly referred to as Andrews Forest, is located near Blue River, Oregon, United States, and is managed cooperatively by the United States Forest Service's Pacific Northwest Research Station, Oregon State University, and the Willamette National Forest. It was one of only 610 UNESCO International Biosphere Reserves, until being withdrawn from the program as of June 14, 2017, and a Long Term Ecological Research site. It is situated in the middle of the Western Cascades.
Niwot Ridge is an alpine ecology research station located 65 km northwest of Denver in north-central Colorado. It is on the Front Range of the southern Rocky Mountains and lies within the Roosevelt National Forest. Niwot Ridge is 2,900 metres (9,500 ft) high.
Sarah E. Hobbie is an American ecologist, currently at the University of Minnesota, a National Academy of Sciences Fellow for Ecology, Evolution and Behavior in 2014 and a formerly Minnesota McKnight Land-Grant Professor.
The Luquillo Experimental Forest is a protected area of tropical rainforest in northeastern Puerto Rico. The experimental forest is located in the Sierra de Luquillo some 50 km (30 mi) east of San Juan, the capital of the island. It is a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve and is used for research into silviculture, forest regeneration, and other purposes.
Tana Elaine Wood is a biogeochemist and ecosystem scientist with a focus in land-use and climate change. Her research is focused on looking into how these issues affect tropical forested ecosystems and particularly focuses on soil science and below ground research efforts.
Anne E. Giblin is a marine biologist who researches the cycling of elements nitrogen, sulfur, iron and phosphorus. She is a Senior Scientist and Acting Director of the Ecosystem Center at the Marine Biological Lab.
Kimberly A. With is an American ecologist. She is a Full Professor in the Division of Biology at Kansas State University.
