Research Themes

Long-term ecological monitoring is necessary to understand the drivers and responses of climate change. From several recent studies of a global nature, it is becoming abundantly clear that short-term studies (typically, 3-5 years) are inadequate to capture the inherent variability of natural systems driven by environmental fluctuations. It is therefore necessary to monitor changes in ecosystems and populations for several years or decades before signals of climate change impacts begin to unambiguously emerge.

The LTEO research programme will focus on the most pressing drivers and responses of climate change by obtaining a baseline characterization of the environment, in order to understand ecosystem processes and change in the medium- to long-term. The programme will collect data on a set of climatic, ecological and social parameters that will serve as indices of change over the monitoring period in each of the LTEO landscapes.

The LTEO research themes are:

1. Soils
2. Forests
3. Grasslands
4. Arthropods
5. Fish
6. Herpertofauna
7. Birds
8. Animal Movement
9. Marine