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

IGN 8

Where Is NEON Now? Updates on the National Ecological Observatory Network

The National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON; funded by the National Science Foundation) is a continental-scale ecological observation platform for understanding and forecasting the impacts of climate change, land use change, and invasive species on ecology. NEON is designed to enable users, including scientists, planners and policy makers, educators, and the general public, to address critical issues and questions in environmental sciences. NEON’s infrastructure and openly-available data products are strategically aimed at addressing issues of scale (from the plot to the continent) for which a coordinated national program of standardized observations and experiments is particularly effective. In its third year of construction, NEON has begun initial deployment of instrumentation and observational sampling. By the end of 2014, NEON plans to be conducting organismal sampling at 14 terrestrial sites and sensor observations at 12 terrestrial sites. NEON also plans to be sampling at 9 aquatic sites in 2014. Full operations are planned to begin at the 60 terrestrial and 46 aquatic sites in 2017. The goal of this session is to update participants on the scientific design, current status, and potential uses of NEON. We will also discuss how scientists, educators, and others can ‘plug into’ NEON and utilize its data and infrastructure. Our intent is to encourage others to begin thinking about how they may use NEON now and in the future.