Budget cuts proposed by the Trump administration could lead to the closure of 26 long-term ecological research, or LTER, facilities across the United States, including the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest in Oregon.
President Donald Trump has pitched these cuts to the National Science Foundation for the next budget year, which starts in October. Congress will debate them this summer.
Congress will debate these proposed budget cuts this summer, with a House committee considering impacts on the National Science Foundation on July 7.
A lot is at stake. The National Science Foundation funds the LTER network, which includes 2,000 scientists at the 26 sites across the country, dedicated to long-term ecological research across a range of landscapes, from tropical rainforests to arctic tundra, seascapes and everything in between.
At the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest, researchers are revving up new work since the Lookout Fire in 2023 burned three-quarters of the forest. “People are rushing in to collect as much data as they possibly can,” said Matt Betts, lead principal investigator of the LTER site at the Andrews. Scientists are looking into everything from changes in stream chemistry to bird populations to forest regeneration and burn patterns, and much more.
Yet as things are getting interesting, the Andrews is facing multiple threats in cuts to the National Science Foundation and proposals to eliminate the research arm of the forest service.
Sen. Patty Murray, the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, says she is determined to protect federal funding for long-term research.
“President Trump’s budget proposes unacceptable, drastic cuts to the National Science Foundation that would jeopardize countless important research efforts, including irreplaceable long-term research happening at places like the HJ Andrews Experimental Forest,” Murray, D-Wash., said in an email. “His budget request is yet another sign this administration couldn’t care less about science and doesn’t understand the immense value of long-term research.”
In the budget request sent to Congress, Russell Vought, Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget, argued the existing federal spending plan is “laden with spending contrary to the needs of ordinary working Americans and tilted toward funding niche non-governmental organizations and institutions of higher education committed to radical gender and climate ideologies antithetical to the American way of life.”
Trump’s recommended cuts to the National Science Foundation target a research network that got its start back in 1980.
Jerry Franklin, a leading forest ecologist, described the creation of the LTER network as a “revolution” in scientific work among teams of people. Most scientific grants are for just a few years, but grants at these 26 sites last six years, and can be renewed. That has enabled scientists to get answers that have led to key policy decisions, from amending the Clean Air Act to prevent acid rain to preserving old-growth forests.
In his work at the Andrews, Franklin and his collaborators revealed much of what we know about old-growth forests — as well as ecological principals for better logging practices to produce wood products, while retaining the ability of forests to regenerate.
Short-term inquiry can’t capture something as basic as whether a forest or species is declining, Betts said. Scientists also can formulate questions that wouldn’t occur to them without being in one place over time — and wondering how it works.
For instance, work in watersheds at the Andrews has explored and explained the impact of industrial forestry on stream flows, which increase right after cutting but diminish as the replanted forest takes hold — findings that have been replicated by a new generation of scientists, as the understanding of forest and stream dynamics grows over time.
Peter Groffman, a professor at the City University of New York Advanced Science Research Center and Brooklyn College, is co-principal investigator at the Hubbard Brook LTER. Scientists there did the work resulting in amendments to the Clean Air Act to address the pollution of acid rain. He remembers prior presidential budget proposals to defund the National Science Foundation. “Society was asking this question, do we need science?” Groffman said. “Ultimately they didn’t cut science that much, because it was important.”
It isn’t just the scientific findings that are so valuable, it is the system of inquiry itself. Other countries just don’t do what we do here, in terms of empowering young scientists to ask tough questions and build a career doing independent work, Groffman said.
“This is something we do really well in America,” Groffman said. “If the government is really going to back off the funding of science, we are losing something that is really unique.”
Some of the data at the Andrews dates back 80 years, noted Brooke Penaluna, lead scientist for the U.S. Forest Service Pacific Northwest Research Station, which hosts the Andrews. “And to say there is no value in that?
“It feels surreal,” she said of the proposed cuts. “And it also feels like … people must not know, because how could you actually want to give this up?”
Management at the Andrews right now is day to day, she said. So much uncertainty is hard to manage, administratively and emotionally. “There is a lot of compartmentalization,” Penaluna said. “And, I think, trust in the democratic process, and hope that it will work out.”
Congress often changes or even ignores a president’s budget requests. The fight for the next budget will start soon. “I’ll be tearing up Trump’s budget,” Murray said, “and working with my colleagues on the appropriations committee to write a new, bipartisan bill that will make the strongest possible investments in NSF and the Long Term Ecological Research Network under challenging fiscal circumstances.”
