Georgia Coastal Ecosystems LTER program

Photo: Solidago sempervirens, a common salt marsh plant.

Photo: Hesperotettix floridensis, a grasshopper common on salt marsh shrubs in the southeast.

Photo: Installing sediment elevation tables (SETs) to measure accumulation and compaction of marsh sediments. We have installed one SET at each of our 10 sites.

Photo: Retrieving instrument logging water temperature, salinity and pressure. We have similar instruments in place at most of our 10 monitoring sites.

The U.S. Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) network consists of a group of sites that receive long-term funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation to study ecological processes at large spatial and long temporal scales. Sites are funded for 6 years at a time, with the expectation of repeated renewals.

The Georgia Coastal Ecosystems LTER site is a fairly recent addition to the network, with initial funding received in 2000. The GCE web page has extensive information about research and education activities at the site. Our research is built around a network of 10 sites that span the range of different salinity and marsh types that occur on the Georgia coast.

My research at the GCE-LTER site focuses on aspects of plant primary production, plant community structure and plant-herbivore interactions.  I am monitoring primary production at creekbank and mid-marsh plots at ten sites on annual basis to examine spatial and annual variation in primary production.  I am monitoring plant community composition in permanent plots and conducting experiments to examine annual variation in plant community composition and how the factors that structure plant communities change across the coastal landscape. Finally, I am examining plant-herbivore interactions to determine how these change across the coastal landscape and across latitude.

Some recent GCE publications:

Clark, C. M., Cleland, E. E., Collins, S. L., Fargione, J. E., Gough L., Gross, K. L., Pennings, S. C., Suding, K. N., Grace, J. B.  2007.  Environmental and plant community determinants of species loss following nitrogen enrichment.  Ecology Letters 10:596-607.

Sharitz, R. R., Pennings, S. C.  2006.  Development of wetland plant communities.  In, Ecology of freshwater and estuarine wetlands, D. P. Batzer and R. R. Sharitz (eds.), University of California Press.

Pennings, S. C., Clark, C. M., Cleland. E. E., Collins, S. L., Gough L., Gross, K. L., Milchunas, D. G., Suding, K. N.  2005.  Do individual plant species show predictable responses to nitrogen addition across multiple experiments?  Oikos 110:547-555.

Suding, K. N., Collins, S. L., Gough L., Clark, C., Cleland, E. E., Gross, K. L., Milchunas, D. G., Pennings, S.  2005.  Functional- and abundance-based mechanisms explain diversity loss due to N fertilization.  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, U.S.A. 102:4387-4392.

Updated 1/08