Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) at Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest (HBR)

The overall goal of the HBR-LTER program is to improve understanding of the response of Northern Forest ecosystems to natural and anthropogenic disturbances. Hubbard Brook serves as a central hub for basic research and ecosystem monitoring, as well as for a suite of educational, policy and outreach activities in the Northern Forest region. The overall theme of the HBR-LTER is the response of ecosystem structure, function and composition to disturbance. In our current research, we seek to advance the integration of our long-term program around the interactions among biogeochemical stoichiometry, the geophysical landscape template and biotic populations. We have organized our research around three types of disturbance:

1. Press disturbances associated with air pollution
2. Pulse and press disturbances related to tree mortality and land use change
3. Press disturbance resulting directly or indirectly from regional climatic change.

Our activities include:

1. Collection, management and analysis of long-term data sets
2. Small-watershed- and plot-scale manipulation experiments
3. Ecological process studies on hydrology, soil, vegetation, soil microbes and other heterotrophs
4. Cross-site surveys and experiments across the Northern Forest region
5. Development and application of ecosystem models
6. Educational, outreach and natural resource management projects coordinated by the Hubbard Brook Research Foundation (HBRF).

These studies are supported directly by the HBR-LTER and indirectly in conjunction with numerous research grants from the NSF, the US Forest Service and other funding agencies and foundations.