Bridging Community and Ecosystem Ecology at the Arctic Long-Term Ecological Research Site via Collaborations

• Main Author: Gough, Laura
• Format: Book Part
• Language: unknown
• Published: Oxford University Press 2016
• Subjects: Arctic; Arlington; Tundra
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199380213.003.0014

My research in the Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) program helped to shape me into the ecologist that I am, working at the interface between communities and ecosystems on a variety of questions. As a university educator and public speaker, I incorporate examples of LTER site-based empirical and theoretical research, as well as cross-site meta-analyses in my teaching and presentations. My awareness of long-term research, in particular the response of North American ecosystems to global change, is heightened by my interactions within the LTER network. Working in the LTER program has provided me with opportunities for collaborations both within the Arctic site and across the network. The LTER program has thus inadvertently provided the framework for all of my current and recently funded research projects. These collaborations assisted in sustaining me through major life events, particularly having children, by helping me maintain my research productivity when my family required more of my time and attention. Currently, I am a professor in the Department of Biology at the University of Texas at Arlington. I teach undergraduate and graduate courses in botany and ecology, and I also supervise MS and PhD students working in the tundra at the Arctic (ARC) LTER site and locally on urban ecology questions. I earned my PhD in plant biology from Louisiana State University and have been affiliated with ARC site since 1996, when I was hired as a postdoctoral scientist by Gus Shaver on a related grant. Since 1999, when I started my first faculty position, I have been an independently funded researcher affiliated with the ARC site, and for the past few years I have served as a member of the ARC Executive Committee. My research at ARC site is at the interface between the community and the ecosystem. My contributions to site-specific understanding have focused on the factors (abiotic and biotic) that control tundra plant species diversity, including the role of consumer species (Figure 7.1). In addition, I have been involved ...