Long-term datasets: From planned precision to serendipity – they are all valuable

Background/Question/Methods . Long-term records are essential for documenting and understanding change in ecological systems. As the transition into the Anthropocene accelerates, ecologists are becoming increasingly aware of the need for precise, long-term data. Today we have in place at least some observation systems that will help future ecologists address questions of change: NEON, LTER, LTREB, various bird and insect surveys, permanent vegetation plot networks, and many more. However, as we look further back, we have to rely on other sorts of data, several of which will be discussed in contributions to this session. Certainly, we can benefit from repeat photography, various records of species observations, and even travel narratives of early naturalists. Several examples of different sorts of historical information and long-term ecological records will be presented and used to review present and future opportunities to understand and predict ecological change.

Results/Conclusions . Many sources of long-term data are available and their existence and means of access should be documented to aid ecologists in their efforts to describe and understand long-term change in ecological systems. Ongoing observation networks will make documentation and exploration of long-term ecological change much more effective in the future. Nonetheless, we do not know what the important future research questions will be, so we need to design observation networks to be flexible enough to address the many as-yet unasked questions.

.