99th ESA Annual Meeting (August 10 -- 15, 2014)

WK 19

NEON’s Mobile Deployment Platform: Seeking Input on a Community Resource

Description of Session:Here, we present our development concepts for NEON’s Mobile Deployment Platform (MDP) and promote dialogue to advance its design. Broadly, the MDP will be a PI or/agency requestable resource capable of observing a diverse range of ecological quantities, change and gradients that cannot be reliably captured with fixed location sampling (e.g. stochastic or spatially important events). The MDP will be comprised of numerous modules (suites of sensors/infrastructures) designed to address specific fields of study including micrometeorology, atmospheric chemistry, ecohydrology, soils, education and outreach.

Our aim is to refine the NEON MDP design by i) identifying the types of questions that can be addressed with rapidly deployable resources, and ii) what types of measurements/data are needed by the science community to meet future research goals. By participating in this workshop you will be afforded a chance to provide direct commentary on the design and instrumentation of the MDP.  We encourage professors, agency scientists and graduate students alike to attend this dynamic discussion.