D20 is the smallest and westernmost of the NEON domains, encompassing all of the islands that form the state of Hawai‘i. The Hawaiian Islands, lying at latitude 20° N, are part of a tropical zone that forms a band around the Earth near the equator. Other Pacific islands in this zone include the Marshall Islands, the Mariana Islands, Papua New Guinea, and the Federated States of Micronesia.
Earth Day reminds us that the earth and the environment belong to all of us—and everyone can get involved in observing, studying and protecting our ecological treasures. Citizen science projects offer opportunities for people of all ages, backgrounds and education levels to get involved in ecology and environmental science directly. The data gathered through these programs can complement and support the work being done by individual researchers and large-scale ecology observatories like the NEON program.
Small mammal pathogen testing protocols for the NEON program are about to get an overhaul. The Observatory is shifting the focus of Rodent-borne Pathogen Status data product from hantaviruses to tickborne diseases such as Lyme disease, anaplasmosis and Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. The new testing protocols will be piloted at five sites in 2020 in preparation for a planned rollout to all NEON terrestrial field sites in 2021.
The NEON program generates ecological data on an unprecedented scale. Making sense of that data often requires sophisticated analytical techniques and computer programs. But if you’re not a coder, don’t worry—open source coding resources and community-made custom programs make NEON data more accessible to the ecology community. These resources are now being compiled in the NEON Code Resources Library.
NEON offers a variety of tools and resources for instructors and faculty moving to online teaching. We realize that these are challenging times for our communities around the globe to delivery high quality education in novel online teaching environments. The data and resources from NEON are naturally suited for teaching ecological concepts and skills in both synchronous and asynchronous learning situations.
We are committed to the safety and health of our employees, partners and communities, and to slowing the spread of COVID-19. With the concurrence of the National Science Foundation (NSF), we are temporarily suspending all activities across NEON that involve in-person or on-site work—including all domains, headquarters and airborne operations—due to the nationwide risks to health and safety associated with the COVID-19 pandemic.
How does human activity impact the environment? The Mid-Atlantic Domain (Domain 02) is a great place to find out. The eastern seaboard of the U.S. has undergone massive changes and development over the last 250 years. Data from the NEON field sites in Maryland and Virginia provide a window into how land use patterns, invasive species and long-term weather change are impacting eastern habitats and ecosystems.
Interested in planning a ground sampling project in coordination with one of our airborne remote sensing surveys? The 2020 NEON flight schedule is now available. Two aircraft will be deployed June through September to collect data over 20 terrestrial and 11 aquatic sites, covering 9 of the 20 NEON Domains.
A new modeling approach could allow researchers to use remote sensing lidar data to predict small mammal biodiversity based on the structure of vegetation in an area. The study was led by Sarah Schooler, now a Ph.D. candidate at State University of New York (SUNY)–Syracuse, and Harold Zald of the Humboldt State University Department of Forestry and Wildland Resources. Lidar Prediction of Small Mammal Diversity in Wisconsin, published in Remote Sensing, explores how measurements of vegetation structure created with lidar data could be used to predict the diversity of small mammal communities.
In the middle of the country, you'll find a land of windswept prairies, cattle ranches and enormous fields of wheat, corn, sorghum, hay and alfalfa. This is the Central Plains (Domain 10), where agriculture rules.
West of the Mississippi and east of the Rockies lies a northern landscape dominated by wide-open spaces, prairie grasslands and an abundance of agriculture. Welcome to the Northern Plains Domain, NEON Domain 09.
Dr. Phoebe Zarnetske, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Integrative Biology at Michigan State University (MSU), is using data from the NEON sites to investigate patterns in biodiversity and species traits across the continent. Her goal is to better understand the drivers that influence species distributions and community assembly.
Paula Mabee, the Nolop Distinguished Professor in the Department of Biology at the University of South Dakota, has been selected as the Chief Scientist and Observatory Director of the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON).
Kyla Dahlin and her team are using Airborne Remote Sensing data from five NEON sites to develop detailed 3D maps of forest structure. Their work, which was funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), could provide new insights into the carbon storage potential of forests.
Land use changes and habitat loss have resulted in an overall loss of biodiversity across much of the country. Luis Carrasco, a post-doctoral fellow at NIMBioS, is leveraging NEON data to better understand the relationships between vegetation structure and density and bird biodiversity in forested ecosystems.
Imagine walking through the deciduous forests in Massachusetts early one spring, a gentle rain falling down on you. Taking a closer look, you now see thousands of hairy caterpillars in the trees.
It's that time again. Each year, NEON hires hundreds of temporary field scientists to assist our full-time field operations staff with observational sampling.
Adlafia neoniana (Naviculaceae) may be tiny, but it's got a big name to live up to. It's the first new species to be discovered on a NEON field site and named after the NEON program. So what is this newly discovered organism? A single-celled aquatic alga with a cell wall made of silica, known as a diatom.
A new partnership with the Arizona State University Global Airborne Observatory (ASU-GAO) will make more frequent airborne observations possible of NEON's Hawaii field site in the Pu`u Maka`ala Natural Area Reserve. The GAO team completed their first flyover of PUUM in January 2019, and these data are now available.
The exact composition of each local community is influenced by variables that include evolutionary history, current environmental conditions, and interspecies competition or codependence. A new study led by Will Pearse of Utah State University is using NEON data to quantify the roles of these different variables in the assembly of ecological communities.
On October 15-17, more than 150 ecologists, earth scientists, data analysts and programmers will descend on Boulder, CO for the NEON Science Summit . While the "unconference" is sold out, those interested in exploring ideas for using NEON data can still participate remotely.
Collecting leaf (foliar) samples from the top of the forest canopy can be difficult and dangerous work. But NEON field teams may soon have an easier way to snip samples with the help of a drone equipped with a robotic sampling device. In July, the Pacific Northwest team tested drone technology from DeLeaves to collect foliar canopy samples at NEON’s terrestrial field site in the Wind River Experimental Forest (WREF), Washington.
What can a ground beetle tell us about the environment? Quite a lot! This diverse and ubiquitous family of insects provides a window into environmental health and change. Erik Oberg, a biologist at Yellowstone National Park, is leading an ambitious beetle-biodiversity initiative on the Northern Range of the park.
How are ecosystems across the continent changing over time? What are the relationships between ecosystem composition and soil organic matter? And how are soil composition and carbon storage potential likely to change in the future? The answers lie under our feet.
It's one thing to read about ecological concepts in a textbook. It's another to see them revealed by real-world data. Students at Ball State University recently explored key ecological concepts using data from the NEON program.
A new study led by François Ritter, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Illinois–Chicago Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, provides important insights into the frequency of dew formation across the U.S.
A new study funded through the National Science Foundation (NSF) Rapid Response to Funding (RAPID) Grant program attempts to answer critical questions about the correlations between biomass burned from wildfires and the emitted quantities of trace gases and aerosols.
Hello again. Over the last few months I have been back at NEON working/consulting with Battelle and the staff here in Boulder, Colorado as the observatory moves into full operations. So I am once again back on the “Inside Looking Out.”
Attendees of a recent NSF-sponsored joint NCAR and NEON workshop, Predicting life in the Earth system – linking the geosciences and ecology identify some tangible synergies and paths forward to advance the capability of Earth system prediction to include terrestrial ecosystems and biological resources.
