2022 Natural Areas Conference

Conference Details

The 2022 Natural Areas Conference (NAC22) will be in Duluth, Minnesota from Sept 6th through 9th. The Conference theme is "Superior Visions: Navigating Complexity Amid Constant Change." The conference features over 100 presentations created by natural area practitioners, including keynote and plenary sessions, breakout sessions, workshop, posters, and field trips.

NEON Events

NEON Domain 05 Field Ecologist Ashley Spink will be giving a talk at the conference. She will be focusing on "what NEON can do for you" including data, educational resources resources, assignable asset projects, and partnerships.

Talk Title: NEON: Integrating open data and infrastructure with community science to better understand changing ecosystems

Talk Abstract: The National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) is a continental-scale facility that collects long-term, open access, ecological data to better understand how ecosystems are changing across the United States. NEON will provide 30 years of data from over 80 ecologically diverse terrestrial and aquatic field sites, including five sites within the Great Lakes region. NEON collects data via field observations, ecological sample analyses, in situ instrumentation, and remote sensing. Researchers are using these data to address a variety of topics, such as biodiversity and biogeography, phenology, biogeochemistry, disease ecology, and hydrology. All samples and data collected by NEON are publicly available and can be accessed digitally through the NEON website. In addition to open data, NEON also provides many resources that support land managers, researchers, and educators, including sampling protocols, data skills training, and classroom-ready lesson plans. By providing free and open standardized data - along with data analysis tools, tutorials, and educational resources - NEON is engaged in the global effort to expand the scope of science and make scientific data access easier for all. This presentation will introduce NEON's field sites in the Great Lakes region, as well as the resources for accessing and working with a variety of NEON data from across the country. It will also demonstrate how NEON's mission of open-access science goes above and beyond the data available on the web portal. Through partnerships with organizations like the Thriving Earth Exchange, that bring scientific expertise directly to local communities, collaborations with other large data collection networks such as EDDmapS, as well as the Observatory's Assignable Assets program, NEON is putting resources and data directly in the hands of the users.

Presenter: Ashley Spink, Domain 05 Field Ecologist & Community Science Fellow, aspink@battelleecology.org 

Registration

Visit the conference website to learn more about the conference and how to register.