Open-Source Ecology Takes Root Across the World

A new collaboration of volunteer research sites, led by CBS' Elizabeth Borer and Eric Seabloom, is shedding light on global change in grasslands. 

In 2005, a handful of young researchers in Santa Barbara, California, were fed up with their inability to answer a major ecological question by reviewing the literature. So they decided to take matters into their own hands and created a network of small experiments. In the past 6 years, the network has spread to six continents and is now poised to make substantial contributions to ecology. “We're on the edge of something big,” says John Orrock of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, a network co-founder.

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