Ecologists are amassing extensive data sets that include both long-term records documenting trends and variability in natural systems on inter-annual to decadal time scales and sensor-based measurements on minute to subhourly scales for extended periods (Hampton et al. 2013). Together, these long- term and high- frequency data are contributing to our ecological understanding. Although there have been several previous ESA sessions that have explored the insights provided by either long-term data or high frequency data, to our knowledge this organized oral session provided one of the first opportunities to synthesize the lessons learned from leveraging both long-term data and high-frequency approaches.