The Coweeta Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) Program is the centerpiece of a cooperative effort  between the University of Georgia and the USDA Forest Service Coweeta Hydrologic Laboratory, funded by the National Science Foundation since 1980. Major university cooperators include Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Duke University, University of Minnesota, Mars Hill College, University of Wisconsin - Madison, and Portland State University. The Coweeta LTER Program encompasses a broad array of cooperative studies averaging 30 projects annually with about 55 graduate and undergraduate students and 29 senior investigators. Process-level studies at Coweeta are linked with reference watersheds for evaluating ecosystem responses to disturbance. The goal of the Coweeta LTER Program is to integrate individual research efforts into a holistic concept of watershed response across a range of time and spatial scales.

Coweeta LTER research combines short-term (five years or less) with long-term (decades) studies on the responses of forested watersheds and streams to natural and human-induced disturbances. Although much of the research takes place within the Coweeta basin, several studies are conducted in other ecosystems in the region such as the interdisciplinary study on the causes and consequences of land use change in the southern Appalachians. Current research emphases include: continuing analyses of long-term hydrology, nutrient cycling, and productivity responses to management  practices and natural disturbances (drought, flood, wind, insects); the cumulative effects of land-use practices on water quality; assessment of prescribed burning effects on the forest environment; interdisciplinary, inter-institutional implementation of ecosystem management on national forests; interrelationships of forest litter on stream productivity, decomposition, and trophic levels; impacts of atmospheric deposition on forest ecosystems; physiological studies of forest carbon balance and competition; and biodiversity.

Coweeta LTER published data sets and bibliographic citations are archived and publicly available on the Coweeta LTER web page (see internet address below). Physical samples are archived and a listing has been placed online for future potential subsampling for additional analyses and hypothesis testing.