Facilitating Collaborative Research
Opportunities for Graduate Students
Tiffany Gann
Sites attending: LUQ, FCE, PIE, KNZ, KBS, PAL, VCR, CWT, BNZ, HFR
Workshop Objectives:
1) solicit interest in developing a supplement proposal to be submitted to NSF and INT for a student symposium with the theme of collaborative research
2) solicit ideas for student collaborative research that could be addressed at a student symposium and for future collaborations
3) develop student initiatives to be included in the strategic planning grant and full proposal to NSF for synthetic research activities (e.g. student symposium; “Student Mentoring at the Network Level” program i.e. travel to sites to learn methodologies and plan research activities; training workshops; inter-network exchange program)
Student Planning
Grant Goals:
Our primary goal is to convene a planning meeting to discuss the three objectives listed above (for which we have now submitted a request for follow-up ASM planning). The students of the LTER Network would like to fully take advantage of the opportunities presented by a network of research sites and researchers as that of the LTER Network. We envision several initiatives that could be included in the synthesis proposal to NSF which would enhance training of students and facilitate collaborative research projects, and ultimately take advantage of the unique opportunities provided by the LTER Network of researchers and research sites. We envision such an allocation of funds to be provided as a supplement to the Network Office solely in support of student initiatives.
The ASM follow-up planning meeting of the LTER student
committee will involve participation from all sites that expressed interest in
student symposium and initiatives planning at the workshop held at the ASM in
Action Item 1. The idea to convene a student symposium was developed during an LTER-ESA evening session, and was met with great enthusiasm by NSF staff, LTER PIs, and LTER students alike. We have received encouragement by NSF to draft a supplement proposal to fund such a symposium. In the early years of this symposium (until a symposium can be funded through the full NSF grant for synthetic research), we envision a very focused meeting with the topic of initiating student collaborative research. Student participants will be limited to one per LTER site, selected by site PIs, to present research with the specific aim of beginning a collaborative research effort. We will also request funds from INT to assist the travel of international students, one representative from a majority of ILTER Network sites, to present research for potential research collaborations. We would follow a day of presentations with a day devoted to breakout groups and further action on developing research collaborations (initiatives). We will assess our success with follow-up surveys of products developed from each symposium.
We have had enthusiastic offers of LTER site facilities to host our first student symposium (SEV and AND). We expect that a time frame that straddles the period between All-Scientist Meetings would be an excellent use of time and resources. With our planning meeting, we will discuss specifics of the organization, timing, participation, and format, and draft a supplement proposal to be submitted to NSF and INT.
Action Item 2. We generated the following list of proposed research topics that students would be well suited to address with collaborative research efforts.
Collaborative research ideas:
1) Effect of land use changes on resource availability
2) Gradients as experiments (e.g. testing ecological theories of latitudinal differences in herbivory, species richness, productivity, precipitation, land-use change)
3) Testing similar theories across longitudinal gradients (normalizing for climate, precipitation, temperature regimes—utilizing Holdridge’s biomes e.g. Patterns of productivity across equatorial forests)
4) Relate response variables including flux tower measurements to large scale drivers e.g. climate change, precipitation, land-use
5) Develop a new research question that employs a standard methodology across sites (e.g. Blum’s decomp questions)
6) Calibrate methods for collecting data e.g. NAPP, decomposition, common currency (carbon, etc) to answer cross-site questions
7) Patterns of fungal/faunal diversity across network
8) Patterns of N deposition across network
9) Affects of latitudinal and land-use changes/gradients on trace gas fluxes
10) Changes in hydrology with anthropogenic manipulation of systems
11) Disturbance across communities
12) Population biology of same species across systems
13) Dynamics of invasion and interactions with disturbance
14) Influence of dominant species/keystone species
15) Recovery after disturbance --> succession trajectories
16) Restoration ecology/designed/engineered ecosystems/coupled natural-human systems-goals? How can success be determined? By restored processes, species, or what?
17) Historical land-use/agriculture—humans have been around longer; different views/goals of what restoration success is
18) New theory of restoration—value-driven (natural heritage); interdisciplinary
19) Influence of agriculture across network
Utilizing a student symposium as a venue for planning of research activities, we will further develop the discussed collaborative research ideas into a series of research activities that will be distributed to students of the LTER and ILTER Networks. We will follow the model of the “interactions of climate and disturbance” working group by developing an initial survey to: 1) determine student interest, 2) acquire qualitative information about research questions, 3) determine what data might be available (and potential response variables), 4) gather information on what patterns are present addressing individual research questions, and 5) determine preliminary data gaps/obstacles to synthetic research. The initial survey will be used to identify a core group of students interested in contributing to collaborative research addressing each question. These core groups will then formulate a second survey to further develop the respective research questions and begin requesting more targeted data for cross-site comparisons. After initial data collation and product development, new collaborations can be addressed by making coordinated measurements and beginning experimental manipulations to be continued within and across the Networks.
Action Item 3. We see the imperative opportunity to develop initiatives for future LTER students and therefore a large portion of our planning meeting time will be devoted to developing student initiatives for the full synthesis proposal to be submitted to NSF in 2005. We have several initiatives that take advantage of the unique position of the LTER Network. We have available to us an incredible amount of knowledge and expertise within and across sites and Networks, from scientists that can share their knowledge and experiences with LTER and ILTER students. To bring that concept to bear, we propose the following as formal LTER student initiatives:
1) continuing support of a student symposium;
2) initiation of a “Student Mentoring at the Network Level” program i.e. travel funding to be allocated by the Network office for: a) travel to LTER sites to learn new research methodologies to apply at a student’s home site, b) planning activities leading to collaborative research (e.g. site visits), and c) training workshops, offered by PI’s and associated scientists, covering topics to facilitate student collaborative research (e.g. specific or advanced data analysis techniques); and
3) initiation of an inter-network LTER student exchange program to allow students to investigate possibilities for international collaborative research.
With our planning efforts, we expect to produce a draft of each of these initiatives with specific organizational details and proposed budgets to be considered for inclusion in the full NSF grant proposal.