Long-Term Ecological Research

IISD-ELA operates a Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) program with meteorological, hydrological, water quality and fisheries data collected since 1968 from a number of lakes and their watersheds.

At IISD-ELA, we have five lakes that are monitored under our LTER program; Lake 239, Lake 373, Lake 114, Lake 442 and Lake 224 (see link to our map here). As part of the LTER program, these lakes are set aside and are not manipulated in any way and, as such, are often used as control lakes for the various experiments performed at IISD-ELA. Control lakes are important to our experiments to verify that the effects we see are a result of the manipulation and not a product of natural variability.

Since our LTER lakes are not manipulated, the long-term monitoring program has become increasingly important in identifying how lakes and the animals within the lakes react to subtle changes in climate (see our climate blasts). For a more complete description of the types of data collected at IISD-ELA please visit our metadata page.

For those who would like to more information or would like to request data, please visit our data requests page.