Our History
The Virginia Tech Ecosystem Research Group is a collaboration of professors and students in the Department of Biological Sciences at Virginia Tech who are studying various aspects of ecosystem ecology. Fred Benfield and Jack Webster started the Stream Team in the late 1970s, and Maury Valett joined in 1998 and was a member of the team for 12 years. With the addition of Jeb Barrett in 2007, we broadened our research area beyond the stream banks to soils and the surrounding landscape. Within the university, we have had collaborations with faculty in Forestry, Geology, Fisheries and Wildlife, Agricultural Economics, Civil Engineering, Biological Systems Engineering, Entomology, and Computer Science. Outside the University, we have maintained collaboration with colleagues at the University of Georgia, the Forest Service, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory for many years. Through the Coweeta LTER project, we also work with colleagues at Duke University, the University of Minnesota, and the University of Wisconsin. We have also had collaborative research grants with scientists at the Institute of Ecosystem Studies (New York), the Ecosystems Center at Woods Hole (Massachusetts), the University of New Hampshire, Loyola University Chicago, the University of Tennessee, Michigan State University, Proctor and Gamble (Cincinnati), Kansas State University, the University of Notre Dame, the University of Wyoming, Arizona State University, the University of New Mexico, the University of Alabama, the University of Montana, and Oregon State University.