During this recent funding round, the structure of the SGS LTER project has changed in several ways. The most significant changes involve a broadening of the scientific participation and leadership of the project.

Our project structure during LTERI (1982-86) and LTERII (1986-90) consisted of 2 CSU PI's and 1 PI representing USDA-ARS, and a very large (~20) group of co-investigators with various levels of project participation. Since the SGS-LTER began, we have prioritized gradual change in leadership to ensure both stability and influx of new ideas. For LTERIII (1990-6), we began with essentially the same structure, with WKL as lead PI, ICB Co-PI, and 2 ARS PI's, and the plan to switch responsibilities between WKL and ICB after 3 years.

During the last 5 years, however, several fundamental things have changed. The number of scientists who are significant participants in our project, the number of collaborators, and the visibility and national connections of LTER have all grown enormously, leading to a huge leap in administrative responsibility associated with LTER. In 1993, we initiated an Executive Committee of 9 persons that meets once biweekly to make all of the major scientific and administrative decisions, including budget decisions, for the project. The Executive Committee consists of the CSU and ARS Co-PI's of this proposal and the data manager. This structure has worked extremely well, and has increased the investment of individuals in the project, as well as ensuring long-term stability, with a large number of persons that are knowledgable about the project and capable of being leaders. ICB and WKL handle day-to-day administration of the project. In 1993, we initiated a Project Manager position to handle the administrative details of the project and free time for scientific activity for ICB and WKL. However, the recent budget reductions have not made it possible for us to hire a fulltime project manager, thus, we are supporting WKL and ICB each for 2 months for project management.

We remain committed to the idea of gradual changes in leadership, and feel that this new structure will allow us to make a transition that preserves continuity in the future. Thus far, we have not identified a Co-PI to take on the new leadership role, but we hope that this will evolve naturally over the course of this funding cycle.

In addition to the Executive Committee, we support a number of other scientists on the project. The group of all LTER participants meets once every two weeks during the school year for either a seminar or to discuss project business.

During LTERIII, we recruited 5 new scientists to the project: Dr. Arvin Mosier, Dr. Bea Van Horne, Dr. Roger Pielke, Dr. John Moore, and Dr. Joy Bergelson. We actively recruited each because of our perceptions of project limitations, and those of reviewers. In each case, we initiated a discussion and began funding at a small scale. This growth has been positive in many ways. However, one problem is that this planned growth was based on budget projections that were significantly more than we currently receive or are submitting for, so we are having to scale down our work in some other areas.

We have invested resources to attracting new scientists our site by implementing a summer graduate fellowship program. Each year, we fund a competition for 3 graduate students, 2 for CSU students, and 1 for a student from anywhere who is doing cross-site work. This has lead to new work on spiders, lizards, birds, and mammals, and represents one of our best investments. We have utilized the Supplement program through ROA awards to invite Dr. Jim Fitzgerald of the University of Northern Colorado to conduct research on swift foxes at our site, and Dr. Fitzgerald has become an important new member of our team. We have found that we receive numerous requests for letters of support from scientists who are submitting to conduct cross-site research here. For these scientists, we offer assistance in data entry and management, access to our field dormitories and laboratory, and in some cases, limited labor from our field crew.