Abstract: We have gone from the early day philosophy that "if national parks were simply left alone they would survive forever" (Botkin 1990, Sellars 1997, Parsons 2004) to the current situation where parks are jeopardized by serious environmental threats both within and outside of their borders (e.g., Pringle 2000).  While science alone cannot solve the environmental problems facing public lands, it can lead us to ask the right questions and result in critical information for management and policy needs (e.g., National Research Council [NRC] 1992, Sellars 1997).  Unfortunately, we lack a unified infrastructure that supports long-term scientific research on public lands and facilitates application of that science to management.  We believe that long-term scientific research would provide essential knowledge for management of public lands, a viewpoint expressed by others as well (Callahan 1984, Likens 1989).  Our goals in this commentary are to highlight (1) the scope and magnitude of environmental problems facing U.S. public lands; (2) the lack of long-term scientific information available to identify and address these problems; and finally (3) the value of long-term research, by using a few examples from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Long-term Ecological Research Program.

---

Pringle, C. M., and S. Collins. 2004. Needed: A unified infrastructure to support long-term scientific research on public lands. Ecological Applications 14: 18-21.

Back to Literature Page

---

| Pringle's Home Page | University of Georgia | Odum School of Ecology |