Background/Question/Methods . The National Ecological Observatory is intended to enable understanding and forecasting of ecological changes at the continental scale.  In order to enable the data to be used to develop and initialize forecasting models, key processes and properties must be measured, and critical initial conditions oberved with sufficient accuracy to support forecasting.  In order to extrapolate from NEON's local sites to the continent, a systematic basis for spatial modeling must exist.  Statistical models of the observatory have been developed in order to determine the adequacy of proposed observing strategies and their uncertainty against these goals. 

Results/Conclusions . In this talk, the Observing System Simuation approaches for NEON, and the data assimilation approach for analysis of the observatory data will be described.  While spatio-temporal models at the continental scale have been most commonly applied in biogeochemistry, NEON's goals require applications to population biology, biodiversity, genomics and other areas that have had local foci.  We will discuss some of the techniques and opportunities for ecological and statistical research in these areas.