LTER Italia: la Rete di Ricerca Ecologica a Lungo Termine

The Italian Network for Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER-Italy) is currently made of 79 sites organized in 25 parent sites, distributed all over the Italian territory in terrestrial, freshwater, transitional and marine water environments; it also includes 7 extraterritorial sites in Antarctica and in the Himalayas LTER-Italy management is regulated according to a Statute that identify an Assembly of sites' managers, an elected Coordinator, a Coordination Committee, and a Technical-Scientific Secretariat. Its development and consolidation have been closely linked to that of LTER-Europe, to which the Network belongs since 2006. LTER-Italy researches are supported by numerous Scientific Institutions, Universities and Territorial Agencies. Furthermore, LTER-Italy has important connections with other European research infrastructures as well as with the Regional Authority. Its activities span over multiple scientific fields, with a socio-ecological approach on biodiversity, climate change, training and education and the environmental challenges that engage our society. LTER-Italy was conceived and implemented as a shared ecological research platform, which favors the comparison of results and the data conservation, with the aim of creating a wealth of information and observations accessible and usable for future generations. The members of LTER-Italy study ecosystems, their dynamics and their evolution, the relationships between biodiversity and ecological functionality, and the environmental responses to natural and anthropic drivers. Within this network, fruitful scientific collaborations are initiated and maintained, interdisciplinary activities and cross-sectional(dominion?) research on ecosystems are encouraged and the valorization of long-term ecological data is promoted. Since 2015, LTER Italia is working at the integration within the nascent eLTER-RI European infrastructure (European Long-Term Ecosystem, critical zone and socio-ecological Research Infrastructure).