NEON Expands its Board of Directors

The National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) has announced seven additions to its Board of Directors. The NEON, Inc., board conducted an at-large election to fill two open seats, adding Margaret Leinen and David Douglas to the board; five of the new members—Jim Ehleringer, Nancy B. Grimm, Margaret Palmer, Debra Peters, and David S. White—were chosen by voting representatives of NEON founding and institutional member organizations. The representatives nominated 10 candidates from among their ranks to stand for election to five open board seats. This election brings the Board of Directors to its full complement of 15 members. Subsequent elections will be held annually in the fall to fill seats vacated by members whose terms have ended.

The National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) is a continental-scale research platform for discovering and understanding the impacts of climate change, land-use change, and invasive species on ecology. NEON will gather long-term data on ecological responses of the biosphere to changes in land use and climate, and on feedbacks with the geosphere, hydrosphere, and atmosphere. NEON is a national observatory, not a collection of regional observatories. It will consist of distributed sensor networks and experiments, linked by advanced cyberinfrastructure to record and archive ecological data for at least 30 years. Using standardized protocols and an open data policy, NEON will gather essential data for developing the scientific understanding and theory required to manage the nation’s ecological challenges.

Why NEON?

The National Research Council has identified seven environmental Grand Challenges for the United States: biodiversity, biogeochemical cycles, climate change, hydroecology, infectious disease, invasive species, and land use. NEON addresses these challenges by gathering data focused on two overarching questions:

• How are ecosystems across the United States affected by changes in climate, land use, and invasive species over time? How do they respond and at what rates?
• How do biogeochemistry, biodiversity, hydroecology, and biotic structure and function interact with changes in climate, land use, and invasive species across the nation? How do these feedbacks vary with ecological context and scale over time?

NEON is a critical step toward forecasting how ecosystems and organisms interact with changes in climate and land use, and the impact of these changes on people and their enterprises. NEON data will be readily available to researchers, teachers and students, and all citizens with an interest in ecological science and environmental processes.

Categories: Climate Change Science