Print PageThe National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) is a national-scale research platform for assessing the impacts of climate change, land-use change, and invasive species on ecosystem structure and function. NEON includes a total of 106 sites over 20 eco-climatic domains and is expected to operate for 30 years. In the current definition, there are 36 aquatic sites including small streams and shallow lakes/ponds. At each site, NEON will support a suite of aquatic sensor and measurements to provide data on biogeochemistry, surface and groundwater discharge, and stream and lake morphology. Biological measurements that cannot be easily measured with fixed instruments will be sampled using field-based procedures to assess key aspects of aquatic populations and communities, including microbes, algae, aquatic plants, invertebrates, and fish.
All biological sampling will be conducted using standardized field collection and laboratory sampling procedures at each site. The goal of biological sampling is to determine changes in biodiversity over spatial and temporal scales, as well as to monitor invasive species encroachment or native species loss at each site.
Results/Conclusions
In this poster, we define the approach for organismal sampling and provide details for producing high-level (e.g. computed) data products. Biological measurements will be based on macrohabitats: riffles and pools in streams, and littoral, pelagic, and benthic in ponds. Biological attributes sampled throughout the observatory include the microbial community, periphyton, macroalgae, invertebrates, and fish. While sampling strategies will be standardized among sites, stream methods will differ from lake/pond methods. Macrophytes, microbes, and fish communities will be similarly sampled at all sites, however methods for algal collection will differ between streams and lakes/ponds. Benthic periphyton is more important in shallow, fast-flowing streams, while phytoplankton is more important to the community in ponds. Similarly, benthic invertebrates will be sampled in both streams and ponds, while zooplankton will be sampled only in ponds.
NEON aquatic sites will be broken into two different time periods, the Construction phase and the Operations phase. During the Construction phase of the NEON Observatory, presence/absence data will be collected for aquatic plants, bryophytes, and lichens. Specimens of each will be collected to create a voucher library and photographic identification key specific to each site (5 sites planned for 2011). These collections will be used to plan sampling during the Operations phase in order to minimize destructive sampling at each site.
