Linking plant traits to remote sensing to scale from local observations to continental ecology

Understanding how patterns and processes vary across scales is a fundamental challenge for ecology and an immediate charge for NEON.  Observations made in situ at local NEON field sites must be linked to airborne and satellite based remote sensing to provide a continental picture of ecological change.

What is NEON doing to enable scaling up?  What are the key challenges?  Can continental scale ecology really be built from 60 terrestrial sites?  We use locally observed plant traits as a case-study to explore these questions.