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Intellectual Merit. Niwot Ridge is the only multidisciplinary, long-term field site for high-elevation areas on the North American continent. As such, the site is an essential benchmark for regional, national, and global networks that measure biological changes and feedbacks and experimentally determine mechanisms for these relationships. A major component of our activities over the last six years has been to develop NWT LTER as a research platform to broaden the scope of science by a) bringing in new scientists, b) collaborating with new environmental observatories such as the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) and the Critical Zones Observatory (CZO) program, and c) collaborating at regional to international scales. Our ongoing research at the NWT LTER is shaped by the interface of two conceptual models a) the Landscape Continuum Model and b) the novel ecosystems concept that arises out of the Panarchy Model. The interplay of these two models argues that amplification of drivers such as climate change, N deposition, and dust deposition in high-elevation catchments may be “tipping” these ecosystems into states not experienced in modern times.

Peer-reviewed publications totaled 122 from 2004-2009, compared to 120 in 1998-2003, and included 8 publications in Nature, Science, PNAS, and Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment.  The total number of peer-reviewed publications, books and book chapters, and graduate dissertations/theses was 154, also similar to the previous funding period.  The impact of our publications can be evaluated in part by a recent bibliometric analysis using the Web of Science database, which shows that the University of Colorado-Boulder, lead by NWT LTER, was the fourth leading institute worldwide of peer-reviewed research on alpine topics.

Searches of our data sets by keyword or investigator have increased by 300% to an average of 85 searches per week in 2004-2009, compared to 26 searches per week in 1998-2003. Our data sets were accessed 980 times per week on average in 2004-2009, compared to 600 times per week in 1998-2003. Spatial data, assessed independently of other data, currently averages 120 downloads per week.  A major accomplishment in 2009 was the acquisition of ten “time slices” of high-resolution orthophoto mosaics that span seven decades — from 1938 to 2008 — at 1.0 m to 30 cm resolution. The new imagery, along with associated DEMs (2−m resolution) and other map layers, has been accessed nearly 1,000 times since its posting in late October 2009. We also continue to post climate data in real time on our Website from the D1 (3,739 m), Saddle (3,528 m), and C1 (3,022 m) meteorological stations, and have added climate data from the Albion townsite (3,259 m), Green Lake 4 (3,570 m), and Arikaree (3,814 m) meteorological stations.

NWT LTER has continued to be a strong participant in network activities.  To name a few: (a) Seastedt was co-chair of the 2006 ASM and Williams a member of the 2009 ASM planning committee; (b) NWT currently sits on the LTER Executive Board; (c) Ackerman served on the IM Executive Committee; (d) several NWT personnel participated in the LTER expansion activities over the last several years, with Williams chairing the working group on climate change and participated in writing the decadel plan; (e) Bourgeron was elected in August 2006 for a 5-year term as chair of the ILTER science committee (concomitant with the his term as co-USA ILTER chair); (f) NWT participated in the NSF brochure “Translating Science for Society,” contributing 4 of the published pi...

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