The landscapes and ecosystems of the LTER sites are representative of larger physiographic, climatic and ecological provinces. The findings at LTER sites are thus representative of larger geographic domains. Significantly, the regions within which LTER sites are located also have social, cultural and economic processes that impact critical processes within the sites. The National Science Foundation and the LTER Network Office have worked over the last several years to encourage LTER sites to develop a regional perspective in their studies. To that end, a workshop on regionalization of LTER sites was convened at the 1993 LTER All Scientists Meeting at Estes Park.

In our Regionalization Workshop, the need for regional perspectives was articulated and nature of the task of defining appropriate regional contexts for LTER sites was discussed. We concluded that sound scientific justification for delineation of regions around each LTER was the critical step in formulating a long-term plan for LTER research at the regional scale. The workshop concluded with the action item being the development of this electronic publication on LTER REGIONALIZATION which would detail the basis for LTER regions and display the geography of each sites region. We expect that when completed it will form the basis of a hard copy edition of the same for wider distribution.

As a result of this workshop, a special competition was issued to augment two LTER sites for regional-scale study.
Read about the results of agmented funding at these two LTER sites