Harvard Forest LTER V: New Science, Synthesis, Scholarship, and Strategic Vision for Society

The Harvard Forest LTER program (HFR) is a two decade-strong, integrated research and educational program investigating forest responses to human and environmental change across the New England region. HFR engages more than 30 researchers, 200 graduate and undergraduate students, and dozens of institutions in research that incorporates social, biological, and physical sciences. Scientists conduct this work across multiple time scales: investigating the present, looking back thousands of years, and using that knowledge to calculate future change. To broaden the impacts of its research programs, HFR is also committed to strong education and outreach programs that engage K-12, undergraduate, and graduate students, as well as land managers, elected decision-makers, and the news media to understand – and in the case of students, produce – societally relevant ecological data.<?xml:namespace prefix = o />

The goal of HFR’s next round of LTER funding is to apply its site-to-regional-scale strengths in research, education, and outreach to address a fundamental research question: What will be the interactive effects of climate change, biological processes, and human land-use on ecosystem dynamics, processes, and the services they provide to humans and wildlife over the next 50 years? HFR researchers will pursue this question by applying long-term data from new and ongoing experiments to integrated “scenarios” analyses. “Scenarios” are a framework for scientists and decision-makers to work together to determine what factors influence present and future landscape change. HFR scientists then use these factors in models to link a range of potential future scenarios – such as a future with limited oil resources – with a range of potential consequences for forest dynamics and ecosystem processes – such as an increase in forest cutting to produce heat and energy formerly produced by oil. This research is part of a national-scale effort led by HFR to incorporate regional land-use scenarios at all LTER sites. The inclusion of decision-makers in the production of the results, and public outreach of those results, fills critical knowledge gaps for scientists and the public, and helps decision-makers better use science to address societally relevant questions.