ILTER is a ‘network of networks’, a global network of research sites located in a wide array of ecosystems that can help understand environmental change across the globe, focusing is on long-term, site-based ecological and socio-economic research.

The design of networks is focussed on the integration of natural sciences and ecosystem research approaches, including the human dimension, acting as test infrastructures for a new generation of ecosystem research across European and global environmental and socio-economic gradients.

The ILTER network can contribute to solving international ecological and socio-economic problems through question and problem-driven research, with a unique ability to design collaborative, site-based projects, creating and maintaining a large number of unique long-term datasets, compare data from a global network of sites and detect global trends.