The Virginia Coast Reserve Long-Term Ecological Research (VCR/LTER) project is funded by the National Science Foundation. The VCR/LTER project's research activities focus on the mosaic of transitions and steady-state systems that comprise the barrier-island/lagoon/mainland landscape of the Eastern Shore of Virginia. Research is conducted in mainland marshes, the lagoon system behind the barrier islands, and on the islands themselves, particularly Hog Island. The VCR/LTER began operation in 1987. It initially focused on geophysical controls (e.g., storms) on coastal ecosystems. In 1992-1994 it broadened that focus to address the concept of ecological state change, which was linked in 1994-2000 to relationships between free surfaces (land, sea, freshwater table). More recent work (2000-2006), added a hypsometric perspective, which provides an alternate way of examining ecological patterns on the coastal landscape. It makes extensive use of the Virginia Coast Reserve of The Nature Conservancy.
The VCR/LTER is a member of the Long Term Ecological Research Network, and is administered by the Department of Environmental Sciences of the University of Virginia. Its field research headquarters is at the Anheuser-Busch Coastal Research Center of the University of Virginia in Oyster, Virginia.
Famous quotes containing the words coast, reserve, long-term, ecological and/or research:
“The Boston papers had never told me that there were seals in the harbor. I had always associated these with the Esquimaux and other outlandish people. Yet from the parlor windows all along the coast you may see families of them sporting on the flats. They were as strange to me as the merman would be. Ladies who never walk in the woods, sail over the sea. To go to sea! Why, it is to have the experience of Noah,—to realize the deluge. Every vessel is an ark.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“We must reserve a back shop all our own, entirely free, in which to establish our real liberty and our principal retreat and solitude.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)
“Attachment to a baby is a long-term process, not a single, magical moment. The opportunity for bonding at birth may be compared to falling in love—staying in love takes longer and demands more work.”
—T. Berry Brazelton (20th century)
“Could it not be that just at the moment masculinity has brought us to the brink of nuclear destruction or ecological suicide, women are beginning to rise in response to the Mother’s call to save her planet and create instead the next stage of evolution? Can our revolution mean anything else than the reversion of social and economic control to Her representatives among Womankind, and the resumption of Her worship on the face of the Earth? Do we dare demand less?”
—Jane Alpert (b. 1947)
“The great question that has never been answered, and which I have not yet been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is “What does a woman want?””
—Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)