ILTER endorsed by the Global Land Project

The Global Land Project has formally accepted ILTER as an endorsed network, enabling ILTER to participate more strongly in GLP research programmes.                

The International LTER network, ILTER, has been accepted as an endorsed network of the Global Land Project (GLP), a joint core Project of both the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP) and the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change (IHDP). The GLP was built on the research of more than a decade within IGBP and IHDP core projects, especially GCTE (Global Change and Terrestrial Ecosystems) and LUCC (Land-Use and Land- Cover Change), along with other projects sponsored by the international global change programmes. This legacy provides the opportunity to study the coupled human-environment system in ways not possible in the past. GLP seeks to merge these existing research communities, and to attract other researchers from the social and natural sciences and the humanities.

With its extensive coverage of geographic regions and socio-ecosystems places, ILTER is in a unique position to contribute to addressing local, national and international issues affecting the environment and related social and economic issues. It is an expanding international research network based on over 600 Long-Term Ecosystem Research (LTER) sites organized within 40 member networks.

The GLP goal is part of broader efforts to understand changes in the interaction between people and their environments, and the ways these have affected, and may yet affect, the sustainability of the Earth System. Changes in coupled human-environmental systems affect the cycling of energy, water, elements and biota at the global level and the global-level changes in political economy, such as international treaties and market liberalization, affect decisions about resources at local and regional levels. In this sense, GLP pursues three objectives: i) To identify the agents, structures and nature of change in coupled socio-environmental systems on land and quantify their effects on the coupled system; ii) To assess how the provision of ecosystem services is affected by these changes; and iii) To identify the character and dynamics of vulnerable and sustainable coupled socio-environmental land systems to interacting perturbations, including climate change. Resulting in 3 main themes for research: ‘Dynamics of land-systems’, ‘Consequences of land-system changes’, and ‘Integrating analysis and modelling for land sustainability’. ILTER looks forward to being able to contribute to these research areas.

ILTER's successful application for GLP endorsement means ILTER members - including all the LTER-Europe member networks - gain access to the GLP network (including various international and regional workshops) and associated opportunities for publications. There is also the possibility to share data among the members of the GLP network facilitated by the GLP International Project Office.

Further information

• For more information about the Global Land Project , or to join, see: www.globallandproject.org
• For more about ILTER see www.ilternet.edu