In October 2024, NSF announced that the next phase of the Jornada Basin LTER program (JRN-8) will be funded through 2030! This is excellent news, recognizing the importance of the JRN-LTER research that NSF has funded continuously for 42 years (48 years by 2030).
This program would not be successful without the effort and commitment of many people over many years! Particularly, the dedicated field crew who keep the wheels turning (John, Seth, Conrad, Herman, and Shelly) and the data management team who ensure our data are squeaky clean and accessible (Greg, Giovany, and Dylan, with help from Darren and others in Wooton Hall). Please thank them when you see them! Additionally, the partnership between the USDA Jornada Experimental Range (JER) and the NMSU Chihuahuan Desert Rangeland Research Center (CDRRC) must be highlighted as they host all JRN-LTER work and without them none of this would be possible. And the pivotal role of the Asombro Institute for Science Education in our proposals should not be forgotten! Asombro finds new and innovative ways to translate and communicate LTER science for wider audiences, and they consistently amaze and impress us (as well as NSF and proposal reviewers!) with the depth and breadth of their programs and community impacts.
Lastly, please recognize the huge effort of the 15 investigators from NMSU and partner institutions (Arizona State University, University of Texas at El Paso, University of Illinois-Urbana-Champagne, University of California-Los Angeles, and USGS-Moab) who started work on the new proposal in early 2023, culminating in a proposal submission in March 2024.
Congratulations and thank you to the entire team!!
JRN-8 research will build on our long-term research and datasets to understand the multi-scale controls on state changes occurring in drylands of the US Southwest and globally (Figure 1). As with any LTER program, each new proposal maintains long-term elements while introducing new ones. Our key objectives for JRN-8 are to: (A) understand how changing climate and land management control ecosystem state change in drylands, (B) assess how carbon and nutrient cycles respond to and control dryland ecosystem states, (C) quantify how wind and water erosion can reinforce or reverse ecosystem state change, and (D) characterize how interactions between soil microbes, plants, herbivores, and carnivores can contribute to abrupt vegetation state change.
JRN-8 will be informed by a new theory-driven framework for ecological processes and state change in drylands, the pulse-interaction-reserve-feedback-change theory, integrating the role of changing climate and land management pulses with the biogeochemical, spatial, and biotic interactions that mediate pulse responses. Our primary goals are to identify the mechanisms and consequences of abrupt and persistent state changes in drylands and advance our ability to predict dryland futures under global change. Advances in understanding state change in drylands will provide new insight into the occurrence of abrupt transitions, state changes, tipping points, and hysteresis in other ecological systems.
