Long Term Ecological Research
Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER), which focuses on multidecadal observations, provides the correct approach and temporal context needed to avoid serious misjudgements in our attempts to understand and predict changes in the world around us and to manage our environment, in particular when trend detection is a central issue as in global change. LTER is also critical for testing ecological theories on community dynamics, variability and resilience, enhancing our capacity of forecasting and of managing resources.
In the last decades the LTER networks initiated a new era in time-series investigations: LTER sites consist of various reference ecosystems, research and monitoring facilities that set a network across the world, fuelled by the exigency of cooperation at local, regional and national levels through sharing and integrating data and findings, creating synergies on global projects and delivering scientifically-sound research to decision makers and public. Italy (www.lteritalia.it) entered the ILTER (www.ilternet.edu/) and LTER-Europe (www.lter-europe.net/) networks in 2006, including 20 sites.
ISMAR is one of the LTER-Italy founding institutions and it actively participates to the network governance and coordination. It is the reference Institute for the marine sites and has the direct responsibility of two sites: the Northern Adriatic Sea and the Lagoon of Venice.
LTER activity of ISMAR focuses mainly on plankton patterns and scales of variability, on the identification of drivers and processes, and on the importance of species-specific attributes. A close collaboration with environmental monitoring programs and oceanographic observations is also fostered, with the goal of contributing to coastal resource management too, making the best use of the available information.
The plankton communities are the bases of the food webs in marine systems and, therefore, the pathways and efficiencies of transfer of carbon and energy to upper trophic levels depend on the quantity and composition of the plankton community. Recent evidences suggest that plankton is a more sensitive indicator of environmental change than the abiotic variables themselves: the non linear response of biological communities may, indeed, even amplify the environmental perturbations. The maintenance of LTER activity on plankton communities, as a key tool to define recurrent patterns and trends of plankton, represents a standing task for marine research.
