@article {JRN55318,
	title = {Ecological theory and practice in arid and semiarid ecosystems: a tale of two LTER sites},
	volume = {59},
	year = {2021},
	pages = {151-180},
	publisher = {Archimedes (New Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology)},
	abstract = {The chapter compares the conceptual history of two Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) programs at U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) research sites established following land overuse in the early 1900s. Early USDA studies were based on a Clementsian model, where vegetation following disturbance was expected to return to the climax determined by climate and soils. Management-based alternatives to the Clementsian model were developed after the dominant vegetation failed to recover and alternative states were observed. The Central Plains Experimental Range LTER (later Shortgrass Steppe LTER) program began in 1981 at a site in northern Colorado. Early studies focused on the inability of the dominant species, blue grama (Bouteloua gracilis), to recover on long-abandoned agricultural fields. These observations were in contrast to the resilience of blue grama-dominated ecosystems in response to livestock grazing and drought. The Jornada Basin LTER program began in 1982 at a Chihuahuan Desert site in southern New Mexico, where black grama-dominated (Bouteloua eriopoda) grasslands converted to shrublands following livestock overgrazing and drought. Early Jornada studies focused on the causes and consequences of this desertification. In collaboration with USDA scientists, the two LTER programs developed new research ideas and approaches which brought an improved understanding of historic dynamics and nuance to the Clementsian-based paradigm. New paradigms also reflected the importance of objective, long-term studies and the dynamic, multi-scale nature of these arid and semiarid ecosystems. Comparing two LTER programs at research sites sharing a conceptual basis, but with different ecosystem properties, can provide insights into the development of US grassland ecology over the past century.},
	keywords = {arid ecosystems, desertification, drought, Ecological climax, grassland ecology, International Biological Program, livestock grazing, long-term ecological research, LTER program},
	isbn = {978-3-030-66932-4},
	doi = {10.1007/978-3-030-66933-1_6},
	author = {Debra C. Peters}
}
@article {JRN54924,
	title = {Synchronous species responses reveal phenological guilds: implications for management},
	journal = {Ecosphere},
	volume = {9},
	year = {2018},
	month = {09/2018},
	pages = {1-23},
	chapter = {1},
	abstract = {<p class="rtejustify" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">Phenological studies are critical for understanding the ability of terrestrial ecosystems to respond to changes in climate. Monitoring seasonal transitions at the species or community level across large areas is challenging and expensive. One approach for lowering costs is to identify phenological guilds{\textemdash}groups of species that exhibit similar timing of seasonal transitions{\textemdash}and limit monitoring to a smaller number of species within a guild. In this study, we evaluated 23 consecutive years of monthly observations of individual species at 15 long-term study sites at the Jornada Basin USDA-Long-Term Ecological Research site to identify patterns in the onset of three phenophases{\textemdash}leaf-out, flower, and fruit{\textemdash}of 16 widely occurring species in the arid southwestern United States and to investigate the existence of phenological guilds. We conducted univariate analyses of distributions in the timing of leaf, flower, and fruit production across time and space and multivariate cluster analysis of the time series to identify coherent groups of species{\textendash}site instances that exhibit coherence in timing of phenophase onsets (i.e., guilds). The six species of C<sub>3</sub> shrubs demonstrated greater consistency in timing of all phenophases relative to C<sub>4</sub> grasses. Further, we found that in all species, leaf-out occurred prior to the onset of the summer monsoon rains. Cluster analysis revealed six groups of species{\textendash}site observations demonstrating high within-year concordance in timing of leaf-out and first fruit across variable site conditions and rainfall years. The six groups for timing of first fruit differed from those for first leaf in that they exhibited greater multi-species membership and within-year variability in timing. We propose that use of phenological guilds can improve the efficiency of ecosystem monitoring, predictive models of ecosystem cues driving phenological events, and land management outcomes.</p>
},
	keywords = {Chihuahuan Desert, drylands, first fruit, first leaf, long-term ecological research, pattern recognition, phenological functional group, plant phenology, Special Feature: Dynamic Deserts, start of season},
	doi = {doi.org/10.1002/ecs2.2395},
	url = {files/bibliography/18-017.pdf},
	author = {Dawn M. Browning and Theresa Crimmins and D. K. James and S. Spiegal and Matthew Levi and John P. Anderson and Debra C. Peters}
}
@article {50814,
	title = {Using mechanistic models to scale ecological processes across space and time},
	journal = {BioScience},
	volume = {53},
	number = {1},
	year = {2003},
	month = {January 1, 2003},
	pages = {1-9},
	abstract = {<p>Human activities affect the natural environment at local to global scales. To understand these effects, knowledge derived from short-term studies on small plots needs to be projected to much broader spatial and temporal scales. One way to project short-term, plot- scale knowledge to broader scales is to embed that knowledge in a mechanistic model of the ecosystem. The National Science Foundation{\textquoteright}s Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) program makes two vital contributions to this type of modeling effort: (1) a commitment to multidisciplinary research at individual sites, which results in a broad range of mutually consistent data, and (2) long-term data sets essential for estimating rate constants for slower ecosystem processes that dominate long-term ecosystems dynamics. In this paper, we present four examples of how a mechanistic approach to modeling ecological processes can be used to make projections to broader scales. The models are all applied to sites in the LTER network.</p>
},
	keywords = {ecosystem moels, long-term ecological research, mechanistic models, scaling, spatial projection},
	doi = {10.1641/0006-3568(2003)053[0068:UMMTSE]2.0.CO;2},
	url = {/files/bibliography/03-008.pdf},
	author = {E. B. Rastetter and Aber, J. D. and Debra C. Peters and Ojima, D.S. and Ingrid C. Burke}
}
