Resilience: insights from the U.S. LongTerm Ecological Research Network

Ecosystems are changing in complex and unpredictable ways, analysis of these changes is facilitated by coordinated, long-term research. Meeting diverse societal needs requires an understanding what populations communities will be dominant 20, 50, 100 yr. This paper a product synthesis effort the U.S. National Science Foundation funded Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) network addressing LTER core research area communities. revealed that each site had at least one compelling story about their would look like 50 or As stories were prepared, themes emerged, grouped into papers along five for this special issue: state change, connectivity, resilience, time lags, cascading effects. addresses resilience theme includes from Baltimore (urban), Hubbard Brook (northern hardwood forest), Andrews (temperate rain Moorea (coral reef), Cedar Creek (grassland), North Temperate Lakes (lakes) sites. The concept (the capacity system to maintain structure processes face disturbance) old topic has seen resurgence interest as nature extent global environmental change have intensified. we present here show power manipulation experiments (Cedar Creek), value monitoring forests both natural (Andrews, Brook) urban settings (Baltimore), insights can gained modeling and/or experimental approaches paired with observations (North Lakes, Moorea). Three main conclusions emerge analysis: (1) Resilience matured over past 40 yr program; (2) there many examples high among ecosystems network; (3) also warning signs declining study. These highlight need studies address how diversity sites within facilitates emergence overarching concepts important driver ecosystem structure, function, services, futures.