Model-data fusion: Merging NEON data and biogeochemical models

Enabling ecological forecasting, modeling and analysis activities are central to NEON, advancing the field’s ability to quantitatively predict, not just retroactively explain, ecosystem processes. Models are used for a number of purposes within NEON, including extrapolating observations across NEON sites to produce a set of continental scale data products. NEON and non-NEON data provide both detailed site-based process information and spatial measures of pattern and process. But how can these data be best fused into land surface models that incorporate relevant biophysical and biological processes? Ensemble data assimilation is one potential exciting, new approach.