List of Contributors.- Preface.-Part I: Introduction:-Long-Term Ecosystem Research between Theory and Application - An Introduction.-Part II: The Significance of Ecological Long-Term Processes.-Theoretical demands for Long-term ecosystem dynamics: Theoretical concepts of environmental changes for long-term ecological research and the management of long-term datasets.-The scientific potentials of environmental monitoring.-Part III: Exploring Long-Term Processes: International Experience.-Twenty-eight years of the US-LTER Program: Experience, results, and research questions.-Introducing the next generation of ecosystem research in Europe: LTER-Europe's multifunctional and multiscale approach.-The role of ecosystem modelling for long-term ecological research.-The role of statistics for long-term ecological research.-The role of remote sensing in LTER projects.-Part IV: Concepts and Results: Presenting and Interpreting Long-Term Ecological Processes.-Section IV.1 Aquatic Ecosystem Research.-Long-term ecological change in the Northern Wadden Sea.-Long-term model simulation of environmental conditions to identify externally forced signals in biological time series.-Long-term investigations in brackish ecosystems.-Long-term ecological research in freshwater ecosystems.-Long-term monitoring in rivers of south Germany since the 1970s - macrophytes as indicators for the assessment of water quality and its implication for the conservation of rivers .-Section IV.2 Terrestrial Ecosystem Research.-Long-term observations of soil mesofauna.-Tracing biogeochemical processes in small catchments using non-linear methods.-Long-term measurements to quantify the impact of arable management practices on deep seepage and nitrate leaching.-Long-term ecosystem research in a beech forest of Northern Germany.-A conceptual framework for integrated functional landscape monitoring in the wider countryside of Central Europe.-Temporal changes and spatial determinants of plant speciesdiversity and genetic variation.-Integration of long-term environmental data by the example of the UNECE heavy metals in mosses survey in Germany: Application of a WebGIS-based metadata system.- Section IV.3 Linking Research and Applications.-Monitoring of ecosystems: Two different approaches - long-term observation versus success control.-National Parks as model regions for inderdisciplinary long term ecological research: The Bavarian Forest and Sumavá National Parks underway to transboundary ecosystem research.-Turning long-term monitoring into policy - using the National park Schleswig-Holstein Wadden Sea as an example.-Design and importance of multi-tiered ecological monitoring networks.-Part V: Future Demands and Challenges.-Conceptualising Long-Term Socio-Ecological Research (LTSER): Integrating the social dimension.-Integrating social sciences into long-term ecological research.-Ecosystem manipulation and restoration on the basis of long-term conceptions.-Exploratories for large-scale and long-term functional biodiversity research.-Part VI: Conclusions.-On the Way to an Integrative Long-Term Ecosystem Research - Milestones, Challenges and some Conclusions.-Index.