Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) for LTER New Site Solicitation (NSF 16-509)

A two-stage review process will be used. All proposers must submit a preliminary proposal that outlines the major goals of the project. Preliminary proposals typically will be reviewed by a panel of outside experts. The Program Directors will communicate the decision to Invite/Do Not Invite full proposals via FastLane. The decisions will be based on the panel recommendations and additional portfolio considerations. Invite/Do not Invite decisions are binding. Invited full proposals will receive panel review and ad hoc review. Full proposals that were not invited or that do not address the two ecosystems as defined in the solicitation will be returned without review.

Preliminary proposals will be reviewed by a panel of scientists with appropriate expertise and you will receive a summary of their discussion (a panel summary) as well as individual reviews from the panelists. We strongly advise that you take this feedback into account if you are invited to submit a full proposal.

Panelists will be instructed to evaluate the intellectual merit and the broader impacts of each proposal during each proposal evaluation stage. Preliminary proposals are brief and lack much of the detail included in a full proposal, so the reviews will necessarily be more general, and perhaps shorter, than those for full proposals. In addition to Intellectual Merit and Broader Impacts, we expect reviewers to focus on the following critical aspects of the research: A) presence of a cohesive conceptual theme that integrates both the questions and the approaches proposed, B) testing core ecological principles, and C) promoting integrated understanding of interacting processes. Additional consideration will be given to justification for the proposed research site, and feasibility of the plans for carrying out the proposed research. While covered above, we again call out the fact that reviewers will be asked to evaluate whether a substantive plan is presented to implement broader impacts of the research.

Program Directors will make decisions to Invite or Not Invite based on the scientific merits and broader impacts of the research, the panel's recommendation, and balance of proposals among sub-disciplines, geographic distribution, types of institutions, and a project's potential to broaden participation by groups under-represented in science. The last four criteria represent the "portfolio balance" that Program Directors must consider when making recommendations.

Invitations to submit full proposals will be issued approximately 3 months after the preliminary proposal deadline.

Given that we only expect to make three awards, we anticipate inviting 15-20 full proposals.

We anticipate a 15-20% success rate.

The two proposals differ in length; a preliminary proposal is restricted to a maximum of 8 pages and a full proposal to a maximum of 32 pages, as described below. They also differ in content.

These are not required, but may be included at the discretion of the investigator.

These approvals are not needed for preliminary proposals, but are for all full proposals.

Conflicts of Interest are individuals who have potentially biasing relationships (personal, professional, intellectual, financial) with the investigators involved with a proposal or the submitting institution(s) and thus who could not provide an objective evaluation of a proposal. The most common conflicts identified are 1) Ph.D advisors or advisees, 2) collaborators or co-authors, including postdoctoral researchers, over the past 48 months, 3) co-editors within the past 24 months, 4) spouse or other relatives who might be in a relevant field, and 5) any individuals with whom, or institutions with which, the senior personnel have financial ties, including some advisory committees, boards of directors, or prospective employees.

The panelists who review your full proposal will have access to the panel summary written for your preliminary proposal, but will not see the individual reviews.

You may add senior personnel to a full proposal, particularly based on advice provided in the preliminary proposal panel summary and following discussion with the cognizant Program Director. Please carefully consider the expertise needed to achieve your research goals before submitting your preliminary proposal for review.

It is a requirement of the LTER program that data be collected, at some well justified frequency, in all five core areas. The core areas are described in the solicitation.

The new arid/semi-arid ecosystem LTER must be within the United States, including its territories and protectorates. Preference will be given to proposals developing a new ocean/coastal ocean ecosystem LTER site located within the United States, including its territories and protectorates, but other locations are not precluded.

This is not a requirement. As LTER projects mature, most sites find that the base LTER support provided is modest. The long-term data collected at an LTER site often makes the site attractive to other researchers, and many of the longest-running sites have leveraged significant support for diverse research activities.

The inclusion of social science research is not a requirement of the LTER program except for the two urban sites. NSF recognizes that human decisions, behavior, and actions may contribute to LTER research. New LTER projects may elect to include social science research if it helps to advance or to understand key, conceptually motivated ecological questions.

While interactions with neighboring NEON or OOI sites may enhance an LTER proposal, no priority will be given to projects that co-locate with NEON or OOI sites, or that collaborate with other partners. However, use of existing federal, state, or local facilities and collaboration with other research sites or programs is encouraged. More information about the status of NEON can be found at www.NEONinc.org.

All proposals to NSF must include plans for broader impacts, which often include education and outreach. Each existing LTER site is provided funds each year to support a Schoolyard LTER program that focuses on K-12 education and supports two undergraduate students to carry out independent research. These activities could be part of the education and outreach plan you prepare. All proposals also must include a data management plan. LTER data should be publicly available as soon as possible within 2 years of collection. The data management plan should include description of how data management will be implemented in the design of research projects, the responsibilities of a data manager, data harvesting, documenting, archiving, and planning for accessibility.

The current LTER program comprises a collaborative network of over 1,000 researchers and students, many of whom investigate common ecological processes. This collaboration expands opportunities to promote synthesis and comparative research across sites. New sites may include comparative research with other LTER or non-LTER projects, but this is not a requirement. These broader-scale activities, if included, should extend the conceptual framework proposed for innovative site-based research. NSF expects all LTER researchers to participate in network-wide activities (meetings, working groups, etc.). We acknowledge that cross-site activities may require additional funding, and that they may increase as a particular site matures.

The research proposed should emphasize major ecological processes and questions or hypotheses that advance understanding of ocean or coastal ocean ecological systems. The new awardee would become part of the Long Term Ecological Research Program, which has the goal of understanding long-term ecological dynamics, processes, and phenomena and of obtaining an integrated, holistic understanding of populations, communities, and ecosystems that is not possible through individual, short-term awards.

A convincing conceptual framework for your project is essential. There are no generic examples, as each LTER site poses site-specific questions that are key to developing an integrated and cohesive understanding how a particular ecosystem is structured and functions. The conceptual framework should identify key components of the ecosystem, pose questions to understand how these components interact, and lead to predictive models.

This balance should reflect the conceptual theme or framework presented, based on key ecological theories; this framework should integrate both the questions and the approaches (observation, experiment, models) proposed. Please keep in mind that all LTER projects must collect long-term data in five core areas, as described in the solicitation.

A proposal may be submitted for a site for which long-term data exist or for a site that requires an entirely new effort. Preliminary data collected previously at a particular site may contribute positively to a proposal.

NSF will not prescribe (beyond the specifics in the solicitation) whether new sites should fill gaps in biomes that are currently supported or prescribe whether complementary sites would be desirable. However, supporting additional salt marsh ecosystems on the East Coast is not a high priority.

For purposes of this solicitation, the Gulf of Mexico is not considered part of the East Coast.

Up to five individuals can be listed as principal investigators on the cover sheet of a proposal. NSF considers all of these individuals as having responsibility for carrying out the research proposed; designation of the first as the lead PI is primarily convenience. The individuals can come from different institutions, but only a single institution can be the awardee institution.

NSF has no a priori expectations about the size or breadth of the initial research team. This team should have the expertise required to address core components of the conceptual framework and to carry out the proposed research. NSF expects that each of the main investigators has a record of research that supports their ability to contribute productively to the project.

This kind of project is likely to be competitive only if the full complement of research needed to address the conceptual framework presented can be accomplished at all locations. Depending on the number of locations involved, a regional study might not be feasible given the modest support provided by LTER awards.

Prospective investigators may wish to contact current LTER principal investigators to learn more about the structure and management of an LTER site. Current sites range in age from 10 to over 30 years, and NSF's expectations about the sophistication of the guiding conceptual framework, research integration, and overall productivity vary considerably depending upon the maturity of the site. While active LTER researchers may provide valuable advice, NSF does not expect a new site to be of the size or scope of a long-running site, or to have developed as sophisticated an understanding of how components of an ecosystem are integrated, or how results from ongoing research might inform broader ecological processes. A group of LTER researchers has developed three presentations for potential applicants for new ocean sites; this presentation can be found at: https://www.nsf.gov/geo/oce/programs/biores.jsp#Opportunities.

The solicitation neither encourages nor discourages developing new Arctic sites.

Please ask us! Contact information for Program Directors can be found in the solicitation.