Printer-friendly versionOne of the break-out groups at the 2014 Science Council Meeting at Konza Prairie focused on how changes in the variability of NPP could provide insights beyond the magnitude and trend of annual means. The group identified three areas where insights could potentially be gained from analyses of long-term observations of NPP: 1) Analyze the spatial variability of NPP through time. Spatial variance of plot-scale measures could be useful for determining the scale of driver interactions. 2) Evaluate whether there are synchronous changes in the spatial variability of NPP through time. Synchronicity would suggest that there is a common driver of variability regardless of the direction of changes in means. 3) Analyze the temporal variability of NPP through time. Rates of change through time of either annual means or variability would provide an estimate of sensitivity to drivers. The proposed working group at the ASM will provide an opportunity to follow up on these ideas with the goal of producing a cross-site synthesis of NPP variation at LTER sites and a potential publication.