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..)
  • Working with the Network Office
    • How the LNO can help
    • How the LNO cannpt help
    • What information the LNO needs

      • Renewals

      • Publications. The LNO maintains a list of LTER award numbers and only publications that cite specific award numbers in the funding/acknowledgement sections get picked up. Please strongly encourage your researchers to include grant numbers. As an example, this great publication, based on 60 years of data from Hubbard Brook, (Forest recovery after deforestation is fueled by mineral weathering at the expense of ecosystem buffering capacity)[https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2419123122], only refers to “numerous NSF Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) and Long Term Research in Environmental Biology (LTREB) grants” and so does not show up in a grant number search.

      • Personnel

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

Where to find additional information

How to suggest updates/new content