LTER Finland

LTER Finland (Finnish Long-Term Socio-Ecological Research network) brings together the Finnish research sites and scientists that have conducted world-class research on long-term socio-ecological processes and problems into a coordinated Finnish research infrastructure, where the expertise and resources of both universities and main governmental research institutes are combined. These ecosystem research sites/platforms support, enhance and promote the inter-disciplinary investigation of long-term biodiversity and ecosystem processes at varying spatial and temporal scales. The long-term perspective helps to determine the impacts of drivers and pressures of environmental change and to investigate ecosystem processes and their response to environmental pressures. Finland is also intentionally stressing socioecological and socioeconomic research components in the national and international LT(S)ER networks.

The LTER Finland (formerly FinLTSER) network was established in 2006 and consists presently of 11 active highly instrumented sites/research platforms, representing the main ecosystems (marine, terrestrial, lake, sub-arctic, urban) in Finland. The core infrastructure of the LTER Finland infrastructure is formed of:

- Research stations of the universities of Helsinki, Jyväskylä, Oulu and Turku
- Research sites, instrumentation and long-term monitoring programmes of main governmental research institutes (Finnish Environment Institute SYKE, Finnish Meteorological Institute, Natural Resources Institute LUKE)
- Information management structures and databases of the participating universities and research institutes

The University of Helsinki acts as coordination body of LTER Finland.