The signing ceremony at the French Embassy in Washington, D.C., was attended by Franois Delattre, the French Ambassador, Franoise Gaill, the policy officer for the Institute for Ecology and Environment of the CNRS, Xavier Morise, who signed on behalf of the President of the CNRS, several scientists affiliated with both LTER networks, and NSF officials.
The MoU comes at a time when the international ecological research community is marking the 20th anniversary of the establishment of the International Long Term Ecological Research Network (ILTER), an umbrella network of more than 40 national LTER networks. The signing also coincides with the annual LTER mini-symposium held at the National Science Foundation (NSF), which this year focuses on collaborations between US scientists, educators, and information managers with their international counterparts.
"The ILTER network grew out of our realization that individual country efforts are not broad enough to effectively understand long-term ecological phenomenon in the context of global change," Collins explained. "As members of the network, both LTER and Zone Atelier contribute to the understanding of international socio-ecological issues through collaborative, site-based long term research projects and the comparison of data from a global network of sites."
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| Contact: McOwiti O. Thomas tmcowiti@LTERnet.edu 505-277-2638 University of New Mexico, Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) Network Source:Eurekalert |