The National Ecological Observatory
(NEON)
Brian Wee, Ph.D.
Chief of External Affairs, NEON, Inc.
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NEON Goal
The goal of NEON is to enable understanding and
forecasting of the impacts of climate change, land use
change and invasive species on continental-scale
ecology by providing infrastructure to support research,
education and environmental management in these
areas.
NEON Cause and Effect paradigm
NEON, Inc. the Organization
• NEON, Inc. is a 501c(3) non-profit scientific organization
with:
• ~80 employees (as of July 2010)
• 54 member institutions (universities and Federal
entities)
• 16 member Board of Directors
• HQ in Boulder, CO with a government relations office
in Washington, DC
• NEON is an observatory managed by NEON, Inc. and
funded by the National Science Foundation.
June 2009
NEON PDR
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Cascade of multi-scaled information from
observations through analyses to users
Models
A National Observatory:
20 Eco-climatic Domains
Typical NEON Site
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Site Schematic
Instrumentation
Hut
Soil Array
Keep Out
Boundaries
Meteorological
Tower
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NEON Data
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Biodiversity in terrestrial and aquatic taxa
Ecological genomics
Population dynamics and demography
Productivity and carbon fluxes
Phenology
Infectious disease
Systematics (Barcoding and BioArchive)
Stoichiometry and nutrient limitation
Ecohydrology
Lab
Breakdown
Notional Flight Plan for Standard Observations of
NEON Core and Relocatable Sites
Assumes 2 payloads
in operation from
roughly April to Sept
Notional flight plan for payload 1 (blue dots) and payload 2 (orange diamonds).
The location of the vicarious ground site is indicated by the *. This flight plan has
been optimized to survey each domain at its period of peak greenness and when
cloud cover is expected to be minimal.
End-to-end information processing
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Information for Resource Management
DOI – Department of the Interior
CSC – DOI Regional Climate Science Center
LCC – DOI Landscape Conservation Cooperative
NEON
• A new major Facility
• Basic discovery mission: To understand and
predict the responses of living systems to
environmental change
• Research-to-operations mission:
• Develop usable information for mission responsibilities
from NEON observations.
• Develop interoperability on key measurements to allow
extrapolation from NEON sites nationally and globally
• Identify key new observations for extensive monitoring,
transfer to operations.
END
Brian Wee
[email protected]
June 2009
NEON PDR
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