Some input from the Site Review Team that would really help us:
1. We have a generally positive relationship with the administrators of our institutions (Colorado State University, USDA- Agricultural Research Service, and the US Forest Service/Pawnee National Grasslands). We are interested in building significantly upon these relationships to strengthen our institutional foundations. It seems to us that an outside review committee may be in a special position to collect information from our administrators about how well we are doing in our part of the relationship. What if anything do they think of LTER? Do they have positive or negative impressions of LTER? Are there things they expect or want from us in the future? Do we ask for too many things from them or too few?
2. We are planning a field station expansion in the future and will need administrative support from the University as well as other institutions such as ARS and USFS; most importantly, we cannot receive funding from NSF without a 50% match from the University. We would appreciate any advice on how to approach an already harried administration to convince them that we deserve matching support for NSF field station grants. We are searching for ways to elevate long-term ecological science on the administrative list of activities deserving attention.
3. We have struggled with balancing what we think are our LTER responsibilities, what we think is important to study in the shortgrass steppe and what we can afford to do. As a result of changes in funding levels for our last proposal we are a bit overextended im terms of what we are trying to do relative to what we can afford. We realize that we are in the best position to make decisions about what to scale back, but do you have any advice/suggestions for dealing with the problem?
4. We have always felt a strong commitment to trying to keep a perspective on the relevance of our LTER results for other sites in the grassland region. Our approach to doing that has caused some confusion with reviewers of past proposals. We would appreciate any advice you may want to offer about how much effort we should expend on site specific work versus regional context work.
02/13/01