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1. Ideas and perspectives: Strengthening the biogeosciences in environmental research networks

   Richter, Daniel D; Billings, Billings; Groffman, Peter M. (August 2018, Biogeosciences)

   Long-term environmental research networks are one approach to advancing local, regional, and global environmental science and education. A remarkable number and wide variety of environmental research networks operate around the world today. These are diverse in funding, infrastructure, motivating questions, scientific strengths, and the sciences that birthed and maintain the networks. Some networks have individual sites that were selected because they had produced invaluable long-term data, while other networks have new sites selected to span ecological gradients. However, all long-term environmental networks share two challenges. Networks must keep pace with scientific advances and interact with both the scientific community and society at large. If networks fall short of successfully addressing these challenges, they risk becoming irrelevant. The objective of this paper is to assert that the biogeosciences offer environmental research networks a number of opportunities to expand scientific impact and public engagement. We explore some of these opportunities with four networks: the International Long-Term Ecological Research Network programs (ILTERs), critical zone observatories (CZOs), Earth and ecological observatory networks (EONs), and the FLUXNET program of eddy flux sites. While these networks were founded and expanded by interdisciplinary scientists, the preponderance of expertise and funding has gravitated activities of ILTERs and EONs toward ecology and biology, CZOs toward the Earth sciences and geology, and FLUXNET toward ecophysiology and micrometeorology. Our point is not to homogenize networks, nor to diminish disciplinary science. Rather, we argue that by more fully incorporating the integration of biology and geology in long-term environmental research networks, scientists can better leverage network assets, keep pace with the ever-changing science of the environment, and engage with larger scientific and public audiences. 

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2. Synergies Among Environmental Science Research and Monitoring Networks: A Research Agenda

   https://doi.org/10.1029/2020EF001631  

   Jones, J. A.; Groffman, P. M.; Blair, J.; Davis, F. W.; Dugan, H.; Euskirchen, E. E.; Frey, S. D.; Harms, T. K.; Hinckley, E.; Kosmala, M.; et al (March 2021, Earth's Future)

   Abstract Many research and monitoring networks in recent decades have provided publicly available data documenting environmental and ecological change, but little is known about the status of efforts to synthesize this information across networks. We convened a working group to assess ongoing and potential cross‐network synthesis research and outline opportunities and challenges for the future, focusing on the US‐based research network (the US Long‐Term Ecological Research network, LTER) and monitoring network (the National Ecological Observatory Network, NEON). LTER‐NEON cross‐network research synergies arise from the potentials for LTER measurements, experiments, models, and observational studies to provide context and mechanisms for interpreting NEON data, and for NEON measurements to provide standardization and broad scale coverage that complement LTER studies. Initial cross‐network syntheses at co‐located sites in the LTER and NEON networks are addressing six broad topics: how long‐term vegetation change influences C fluxes; how detailed remotely sensed data reveal vegetation structure and function; aquatic‐terrestrial connections of nutrient cycling; ecosystem response to soil biogeochemistry and microbial processes; population and species responses to environmental change; and disturbance, stability and resilience. This initial study offers exciting potentials for expanded cross‐network syntheses involving multiple long‐term ecosystem processes at regional or continental scales. These potential syntheses could provide a pathway for the broader scientific community, beyond LTER and NEON, to engage in cross‐network science. These examples also apply to many other research and monitoring networks in the US and globally, and can guide scientists and research administrators in promoting broad‐scale research that supports resource management and environmental policy. 

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3. Steering operational synergies in terrestrial observation networks: opportunity for advancing Earth system dynamics modelling

   https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-9-593-2018  

   Baatz, Roland; Sullivan, Pamela L.; Li, Li; Weintraub, Samantha R.; Loescher, Henry W.; Mirtl, Michael; Groffman, Peter M.; Wall, Diana H.; Young, Michael; White, Tim; et al (January 2018, Earth System Dynamics)

   Abstract. Advancing our understanding of Earth system dynamics (ESD) depends on thedevelopment of models and other analytical tools that apply physical,biological, and chemical data. This ambition to increase understanding anddevelop models of ESD based on site observations was the stimulus forcreating the networks of Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER), Critical ZoneObservatories (CZOs), and others. We organized a survey, the results of whichidentified pressing gaps in data availability from these networks, inparticular for the future development and evaluation of models that representESD processes, and provide insights for improvement in both data collectionand model integration. From this survey overview of data applications in the context of LTER andCZO research, we identified three challenges: (1) widen application ofterrestrial observation network data in Earth system modelling,(2) develop integrated Earth system models that incorporate processrepresentation and data of multiple disciplines, and (3) identifycomplementarity in measured variables and spatial extent, and promotingsynergies in the existing observational networks. These challenges lead toperspectives and recommendations for an improved dialogue between theobservation networks and the ESD modelling community, including co-locationof sites in the existing networks and further formalizing theserecommendations among these communities. Developing these synergies willenable cross-site and cross-network comparison and synthesis studies, whichwill help produce insights around organizing principles, classifications,and general rules of coupling processes with environmental conditions. 

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4. Building a collaborative, university-based science-in-action video storytelling model that translates science for public engagement and increases scientists' relatability

   https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomm.2022.1049648  

   Seidel, Dena K.; Morin, Xenia K.; Staffen, Marissa; Ludescher, Richard D.; Simon, James E.; Schofield, Oscar (January 2023, Frontiers in Communication)

   Collaborating scientists and storytellers successfully built a university-based science-in-action video storytelling model to test the research question: Can university scientists increase their relatability and public engagement through science-in-action video storytelling? Developed over 14 years, this science storytelling model produced more than a dozen high-visibility narratives that translated science to the public and featured scientists, primarily environmental and climate scientists, who are described in audience surveys as relatable people. This collaborative model, based on long-term trusting partnerships between scientists and video storytellers, documented scientists as they conducted their research and together created narratives intended to humanize scientists as authentic people on journeys of discovery. Unlike traditional documentary filmmaking or journalism, the participatory nature of this translational science model involved scientists in the shared making of narratives to ensure the accuracy of the story's science content. Twelve science and research video story products have reached broad audiences through a variety of venues including television and online streaming platforms such as Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), Netflix, PIVOT TV, iTunes, and Kanopy. With a reach of over 180 million potential public audience viewers, we have demonstrated the effectiveness of this model to produce science and environmental narratives that appeal to the public. Results from post-screening surveys with public, high school, and undergraduate audiences showed perceptions of scientists as relatable. Our data includes feedback from undergraduate and high school students who participated in the video storytelling processes and reported increased relatability to both scientists and science. In 2022, we surveyed undergraduate students using a method that differentiated scientists' potential relatable qualities with scientists' passion for their work, and the scientists' motivation to help others, consistently associated with relatability. The value of this model to scientists is offered throughout this paper as two of our authors are biological scientists who were featured in our original science-in-action videos. Additionally, this model provides a time-saving method for scientists to communicate their research. We propose that translational science stories created using this model may provide audiences with opportunities to vicariously experience scientists' day-to-day choices and challenges and thus may evoke audiences' ability to relate to, and trust in, science. 

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5. Doing Geology in an Online World

   Walker, J.D. (January 2021, GSA today)

   null (Ed.)

   The earth sciences, all sciences, are doing more and more of their activities online. Although moving online was previously a well-established trend, the COVID-19 crisis has accelerated this, as faculty, teachers, and students came to understand all too well during 2020. Ordinary activities, such as field trips, field camps, and even professional meetings like GSA 2020 Connects Online, have moved mostly online (Tikoff et al., 2020). We have had to devise new ways of teaching that are entirely outside of our experience. Rather than wistfully wishing for a return to times past, the current situation is an opportunity to explore change and depart from our old ways of doing things, striving to make our science and our geology richer to each other. Returning to and reliving the past is what we do in our geology, but it should not be what we do as geologists and scientists. At the same time, it is becoming more critical for earth scientists, and all scientists, to better engage the public and stakeholders in their work, their data, and their insights and conclusions. We have been facing not only a pandemic of disease but also a pandemic of climate change accompanied by the malady of denying science. Because the subject of geology is our shared planet and environment, geoscientists can present much of their work in a way that is relevant to the public. We have an advantage in that the public can see what we do, look directly at what we study, and appreciate where samples come from for our analyses. The basis of our science surrounds us. The online world further opens our science, whether in geologic maps, pictures of thin sections of rocks, or a numerical age for a sample, to general observation. This new openness and connectedness can give us the power of remote participation and access 

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