Sensor positions files published with instrument data provide spatial information about the physical locations of sensors. The variable names in these files have been updated to more accurately describe the contents of each column, and descriptions of each variable have been added to the variables files.
The NEON stream site in Domain 04 which was being called Río Guilarte is actually located in the Río Yahuecas. This happened because both streams are located within the same USGS 12-digit Hydrologic Unit (210100030201, Río Guilarte at Lago Yahuecas Dam). Moving forward, the site name in NEON documentation will be updated to Río Yahuecas, while the 4-digit NEON siteID used to retrieve the data from the NEON data portal and the API will remain "GUIL."
The NEON program supports 34 aquatic field sites, including lakes, wadeable streams, and non-wadeable rivers. These sites—many of them colocated with NEON terrestrial field sites—provide a deluge of data for ecologists interested in aquatic ecology and limnology.
Dr. Kyla Dahlin of Michigan State University says support networks and mentors have helped her pursue a career researching landscape and plant ecology, remote sensing, and Earth system modeling. From making management plans for city parks, to thinking globally about ecology, she has seen a lot in her STEM journey.
The National Center of Atmospheric Research (NCAR), NEON, and CI Compass have worked to bring about the NCAR-NEON-Community Collaborations. Their efforts now link atmospheric and ecological science communities to begin seeking meaningful data together.
We are deeply saddened by the passing of Dr. Jianwu (Jim) Tang this January. He was a respected senior scientist at the Marine Biological Laboratory, Ecosystems Center (University of Chicago), Woods Hole, Massachusetts, who made many contributions to making NEON what it is today.
When researchers come together, good things happen—especially when they have access to open data. The connections made at the 2019 NEON Science Summit led to a number of new studies and published papers. Now, we're looking forward to the 2023 ESIIL Innovation Summit - applications to attend the Summit are due January 22!
Blue oaks are a keystone species in the woodlands of central California; however, climate change and land management practices have threatened populations in many areas. NEON's Sokaina Alkhafaji partnered with the Sierra Foothill Conservancy and the University of California Cooperative Extension to develop blue oak monitoring protocols that could be used by landowners and conservation organizations across the state.
For the latest post in this series, we feature Lori Petrauski, a NEON Senior Field Ecologist for Domains 18 and 19 (Tundra and Taiga) in Alaska. Inclusivity, appreciation for nature, and critical thinking about how ecology can help to understand future impacts are at the forefront of her approach to science.
Treetop leaf sampling at forested NEON field sites just got a whole lot easier. We've added a new tool to our kit: an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), or drone. Drone-based foliar sampling has been added as an official NEON protocol for forested sites. The UAV will also be available for use in the Assignable Assets program.
In this 7th Domain Digest, hear from two Domains about their collaborations with student programs designed to give the next generation of scientists experience with hands-on ecology.
Battelle NEON is working with Google Public Sector to leverage the speed and power of Google Cloud's artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) capabilities to accelerate discovery and get ecological data into the hands of scientists, educators, and decision makers.
Exactly how does biodiversity impact the stability of communities over time and across scales? A recent paper uses NEON data to explore the relationship between plant biodiversity and temporal stability at both local and regional scales.
A new paper in Journal of Animal Ecology uses NEON lidar data plus observational data to explore relationships between animal species richness and various local and regional variables. The goal? To determine which variables have the best predictive power for species richness at different scales.
A recent study published in Global Ecology and Biogeography explores how lidar and hyperspectral remote sensing data could be fused to improve estimates of plant biodiversity in temperate forests.
It was previously reported that fDOM values (Water Quality data product, DP1.20288.001), measured using older model sensor probes, were artificially low. NEON has retired these probes and replaced them with newer models in which the defect has been corrected. It therefore should not occur in any data collected after June 1st, 2022.
In RELEASE-2022, the phe_statusintensity table in the Plant Phenology data product (DP1.10055.001) did not include observations for the ‘Young leaves’ phenophase for several growth forms for observations made in 2020. These records are also absent in provisional data accessed prior to 2022-10. The processing error that led to omission of these records has been fixed and the data have been reprocessed. 2020 data will be included in RELEASE-2023.
In August, ESA/CSEE 2022 in Montreal was the first in-person meeting for the societies since 2019, and there were plenty of reasons to be excited. Our favorite? Seeing talks and posters from researchers who are leveraging NEON data to explore critical questions in ecology, from population dynamics to carbon cycling. Here are three that caught our eye.
We recently asked Puerto Rican-born Wilmarie Plaza-Muniz, Field Ecologist with the NEON program in the Atlantic Neotropical Domain, to share about her work with the national project, her path into ecology, and how her heritage and passions inform her current work.
