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Long Term Agroecosystem Research Overview

In pursuit of sustainable U.S. agriculture, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) launched the Long-Term Agroecosystem (LTAR) network. The LTAR network is composed of 18 locations distributed across the contiguous United States working together to address national and local agricultural priorities and advance the sustainable intensification of U.S. agriculture.

The LTAR network represents a range of major U.S. agroecosystems, including annual row cropping systems, grazinglands, and integrated systems representative of roughly 49 percent of cereal production, 30 percent of forage production, and 32 percent of livestock production in the United States. Furthermore, the LTAR sites span geographic and climatic gradients representing a variety of challenges and opportunities to U.S. agriculture.

The LTAR network uses experimentation and coordinated observations to develop a national roadmap for the sustainable intensification of agricultural production. While the LTAR network is a new network, experimentation and measurements began at some LTAR sites more than 100 years ago, while other locations started their research as recently as 19 years ago.

A primary goal of LTAR is to develop and to share science-based findings with producers and stakeholders. Tools, technologies, and management practices resulting from LTAR network science will be applied to the sustainable intensification of U.S. agriculture. Technical innovations, including new production techniques, genetics, and sensor infrastructure applied at the farm/ranch level can increase the capacity for adaptive management, reduce time and operational costs, and increase profits and the quality of life for producers.

For full list of LTAR sites, view the sites matrix at https://ltar.ars.usda.gov/sites/.

For more information about the LTAR network visit: https://ltar.ars.usda.gov

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LTAR Research Sites

Data from the following LTAR sites are presented. They are related to topics such as agricultural sustainability, climate change, ecosystem services, and natural resource conservation at the watershed or landscape scale.

  • Archbold Biological Station (ABS), Venus, FL
  • Cook Agronomy Farm (CAF), Pullman, WA
  • Central Mississippi River Basin (CMRB), Columbia, MO
  • Central Plains Experimental Range (CPER), Cheyenne, WY; Fort Collins, CO; Nunn, CO
  • Eastern Corn Belt (ECB), Columbus, OH; West Lafayette, IN
  • Gulf Atlantic Coastal Range (GACP), Tifton, GA
  • Great Basin (GB), Boise, ID; Burns, OR
  • Jornada Experimental Range (JER), Las Cruces, NM
  • Kellogg Biological Station (KBS), southwestern MI
  • Lower Mississippi River Basin (LMRB), Oxford, MS; AR; LA; MO
  • Northern Plains (NP), Mandan, ND
  • Platte River-High Plains Aquifer (PRHP), Lincoln, NE
  • Southern Plains (SP), El Reno, OK
  • Texas Gulf (TG), Riesel, TX
  • Upper Chesapeake Bay (UCB), University Park, PA
  • Upper Mississippi River Basin (UMRB), Ames, IA; MN; WI
  • Walnut Gulch Experimental Watershed (WGEW), Tucson, AZ; Tombstone, AZ
  • Lower Chesapeake Bay (LCB), Beltsville, MD

    • Datasets

    56 datasets

    Data from: Vegetation index-based partitioning of evapotranspiration is deficient in grazed systems

      The dataset includes 30 minutes values of partitioned evaporation (E) and transpiration (T), T:ET ratios, and other ancillary datasets for three ET partitioning methods viz. Flux Variance Similarity (FVS) method, Transpiration Estimation Algorithm (TEA), and Underlying Water Use Efficiency (uWUE) method for the three wheat sites. The dataset also contains remote sensing-derived Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI) data for each site.

      Upper Washita River Experimental Watersheds: Nutrient Water Quality Data

      NAL Geospatial Catalog
        Climate variability, changing land use and management, and dynamic policy environments are the main reasons why long-term water quality data sets are needed to understand and predict possible water quality outcomes to alternative future scenarios. Such data sets were acquired by the USDA-ARS in three watersheds in Oklahoma: the Southern Great Plains Research Watershed (SGPRW), the Little Washita River Experimental Watershed (LWREW), and the Fort Cobb Reservoir Experimental Watershed (FCREW).

        Little Washita River Experimental Watershed, Oklahoma (Flow)

        NAL Geospatial Catalog
          Over the past five decades, the United States Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS) and the United States Geological Survey (USGS) have collected stream flow, reservoir, and groundwater data in the Fort Cobb Reservoir Experimental Watershed (FCREW) and Southern Great Plains Research Watershed (SGPRW), which includes the Little Washita River Experimental Watershed (LWREW) in central Oklahoma.

          SGP97 Surface: NOAA/ATDD Little Washita, Oklahoma Long Term Flux Site

          NAL Geospatial Catalog
            The temporal coverage for this dataset is as follows: Begin datetime: 1997-05-31 00:00:00, End datetime: 1997-08-09 23:59:59. NOAA/ATDD (Tilden Meyers) started operation of a long term flux monitoring site near the Little Washita watershed in Oklahoma in 1996. Half-hourly observations of wind speed and direction, air temperature, relative humidity, pressure, incoming global radiation, incoming and outgoing visible radiation, net radiation, ground heat flux, precipitation, wetness, skin temperature, soil temperature (at 2, 4, 8, 16, 32 and 64 cm), average wind vector speed, kinematic shear stress, streamwise velocity variance, crosswind velocity variance, vertical velocity variance, sensible heat flux, latent energy flux, CO2 flux and soil moisture at 20 cm (started 5 June 1997).