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Harvard Forest Symposium Abstract 2013

  • Title: NEON: Challenges and Opportunities Ahead
  • Primary Author: David Tazik (NEON, Inc)
  • Additional Authors: Steve Berukoff (NEON, Inc.); Michael Denslow (NEON, Inc.); Tom Kampe (NEON, Inc); Heather Powell (NEON, Inc); Jeff Taylor (NEON, Inc.); Andrea Thorpe (NEON, Inc.)
  • Abstract:

    NEON is an NSF-funded observatory with a mission to enable understanding and forecasting of the impacts of climate change, land-use change and invasive species on continental-scale ecology. It is a new major facility designed to provide data and information to scientists, educators, decision makers and the general public on biological processes and their responses to multiple stressors, and to make several infrastructure assets available to support research, education and environmental management.



    NEON is now in its second full year of construction. Site construction and initial deployment of instrumentation are proceeding at numerous sites across the US, and operations are beginning at several of these. By the end of 2013, initial operation of the observatory will yield instrument-based data from seven sites; 13 sites will be added during 2014. Sampling of NEON’s sentinel taxa will begin at eight aquatic and terrestrial sites during 2013, with another eight each to start in 2014. These data will be considered provisional until appropriate quality checks are performed and the data validated for scientific applications. Several months will be required to complete this “commissioning phase.” Airborne Observation Platform flights will take place over multiple sites including one campaign coincident with the NASA AVIRIS platform in southern California -- another was completed during 2012 to document impacts of the 100 square mile High Park fire that occurred in Colorado.



    With planned completion in 2017, the time is quickly approaching when NEON data and infrastructure will be available for use by ecologists world-wide. NEON’s continuing success relies on active dialogue with its community of users to help answer some of the most challenging and exciting continental scale ecological questions of our time. NEON has engaged the community through several working groups to develop and refine its data collection protocols. This engagement must continue to further advance the scientific objectives and impact of the observatory. Our intent is to capitalize on intellectual resources across NEON’s diverse community of users, encourage critical thinking on how to make the best use of forthcoming NEON data, create opportunities for the community to publish scholarly papers early using NEON data and assignable assets, promote use of NEON data in education, and keep NEON at the forefront of thinking and discussion across the scientific community.

  • Research Category: Biodiversity Studies
    Forest-Atmosphere Exchange
    Large Experiments and Permanent Plot Studies
    Regional Studies
    Soil Carbon and Nitrogen Dynamics