Principal Investigator Home
This part of the website is a place for new and experienced LTER principal investigators (PIs) to get up to speed on the pros, cons, and relevant context of LTER site management approaches.
Draft Outline
Draft Outline – LTER PI handbook Under construction as of October 13, 2025
Welcome
AKA: omg what have you gotten yourself into?
Background
- Founding (links to 1978 and 1979 workshops), including original core areas
- Expansion (site timeline)
- Major products and initiatives (EcoTrends, Decade of synthesis, cross-site experiments, distributed experiments)
- Major leadership transitions
LTER Structure
- Science Council
- Executive Board
- Committees and their roles and relationships
- Bylaws
- Division of responsibility between LNO/EB/NSF
- How the LNO can support sites
- Centralized communication
- Committee support
- Synthesis
- Training
- Templates and onboarding
- Information sites should be providing to the LNO
- Successful proposals (on award) - with Cover page, Data Management Plan, Site Management Plan, SAIF Plan, and Broadening Participation plan, but without detailed budget.
- Publications (at least annually)
- Personnel (preferably several times a year, but at least annually)
Regular meetings
- Annual Science Council Meeting
- Triennial All Scientists Meetings
- Site All-Hands Meetings
Review and renewal cycle
- Typical timeline
- Proposals
- Where to access past proposals
- Ideas for inclusive proposal development processes
- Proposal development: Dos and don’ts, successful conceptual framework
- Reviews
- Sample schedules, material packets
- General dos, don’ts and cautions for reviews
- Advice on virtual reviews
General Site Administration
- This is hard. Don’t hesitate to ask for advice.
- Lead PI Meeting at Science Council
- Lead PI email list
- Starting from scratch - Issues requiring special consideration for brand new sites (recently: MSP, NES, BLE, NGA)
- Websites
- Press releases
- Mailing lists
- Explaining what LTER is to your institution
- Bylaws/Best Practices/Handbooks
- Leadership transitions - Issues for consideration when serving as a new leader of an existing site (recently: SEV, KNZ, NWT, KBS, FCE)
- Establishing your own leadership approach
- Communicating changes (to participants, university leadership, “friends of…”)
- Dedicated field site/station (ARC, KBS, AND, MCR, CDR…) v. distributed research locations (MSP, CAP, …)
- One or a few institutions (KBS, FCE, JRN…) v. highly distributed among institutions (ARC, MCM, PAL, GCE..)
Leadership:
- Co-lead PIs (CDR, GCE, MCR, BLE…)
- Project management support (HFR, LUQ, MCR, SBC, NES…)
- A designated project manager or research manager assists with tracking research activities, communications, scheduling, events, etc
- Going it alone (Everyone else?)
Internal Management structure
- Internal Executive Committee (FCE. …)
- Executive/Management Committees
- Who’s invited?
- How often do they meet?
- What kinds of issues do they tackle
- Staff support?
- External Advisory Boards (who has these? FCE, VCR, …)
- Who and how often?
- What kinds of questions do they offer advice on? How do you convene or request feedback?
- How managed?
- Models for divvying up funding (plusses and minuses)
- Grad students only (??)
- Project-based (??)
- Planned and predictable every year (??)
- Models for bringing in funding
- Gift solicitation and management
- Relationships with University administrators and development offices
- Interaction with LTER-related leveraged funding
- Related research foundation/“Friends-of” organization
Site Science & Communications
- Listservs, newsletters, brown bag meetings, workshops, annual meetings
- Engagement of PIs, postdocs, graduate and undergraduate students
- Team and open science models
- Working group structures