Abstract
Rapid changes in climate and land use and the resulting shifts in species distributions and ecosystem functions have motivated the development of the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON). Integrating across spatial scales from ground sampling to remote sensing, NEON will provide data for users to address ecological responses to changes in climate, land use, and species invasion across the United States for at least 30 years. Although NEON remote sensing and tower sensor elements are relatively well known, the biological measurements are not. This manuscript describes NEON terrestrial sampling, which targets organisms across a range of generation and turnover times, and a hierarchy of measurable biological states. Measurements encompass species diversity, abundance, phenology, demography, infectious disease, ecohydrology, and biogeochemistry. The continental‐scale sampling requires collection of comparable and calibrated data using transparent methods. Data will be publicly available in a variety of formats and suitable for integration with other long‐term efforts. NEON will provide users with the data necessary to address large‐scale questions, challenge current ecological paradigms, and forecast ecological change.
Highlights
Climate plays an important role in changing biogeochemistry, species distributions, and human health (Singh 2010, Thomas 2010, Finzi et al 2011)
The overarching scientific goal of National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) is to enable understanding and forecasting of the impacts that changes in climate, land use, and species invasions have on broad-scale ecosystem function
The NEON Collection Facilities will hold a curated collection of tissues, whole organisms, genomic extracts, soils, and processed samples from analytical measurements that can be requested by the community for external research purposes
Summary
Climate plays an important role in changing biogeochemistry, species distributions, and human health (Singh 2010, Thomas 2010, Finzi et al 2011). The overarching scientific goal of NEON is to enable understanding and forecasting of the impacts that changes in climate, land use, and species invasions have on broad-scale ecosystem function To accomplish this goal, NEON must develop a rigorous modeling framework capable of extrapolating observations from individual sites to regional and continental scales. One of the challenges facing the terrestrial sampling design is the development and implementation of a scalable, comparable, and standardized framework that satisfies the multiple constraints that vary among sites Field sampling at this scale is rare and the design is complex due to the requirement that data meet the criteria of the observatory (i.e., long-term collection with consistent methodology, calibration, open-access, and fully documented protocols and data processing). We present the design decisions approved by the National Science Foundation during the Major Research Equipment and Facilities Construction review process for the NEON terrestrial measurements in preparation for NEON construction which began in 2012
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