NEON Survey
The Ecological Society of America is conducting an online questionnaire to gather community input on some of the unique training and education issues related to the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON). This questionnaire is designed to document examples from the ecological community of the training needs and issues that will occur when using NEON facilities and data. It is being conducted by ESA in order to help the NEON Project Office include community feedback for its National Science Foundation (NSF) Preliminary Design Review, scheduled for 30 April – 4 May 2007.
Background Information:
The National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) will be the first national ecological measurement and observation system designed both to answer regional- to continental-scale scientific questions and to have the interdisciplinary participation necessary to achieve credible ecological forecasting and prediction. As such, NEON will transform the way we conduct science by enabling the integration of research and education from natural to human systems, and from genomes to the biosphere. Social scientists and educators will join ecologists and physical scientists in NEON planning and design and participate as observatory users, recognizing that we live on landscapes that are, to varying degrees, human-dominated ecosystems.
In response to and grand challenges in ecology and the environmental sciences, the National Science Foundation (NSF) has proposed that Major Research Equipment and Facilities Construction (NSF-MREFC) funds be used to implement a new and unprecedented research and education platform—NEON, the National Ecological Observatory Network. NEON is envisioned as
"a continental scale research instrument consisting of geographically distributed infrastructure, networked via state-of-the-art communications. Cutting-edge lab and field instrumentation, site-based experimental infrastructure, natural history archive facilities and/or computational, analytical and modeling capabilities, linked via a computational network will comprise NEON. NEON will transform ecological research by enabling studies on major environmental challenges at regional to continental scales. Scientists and engineers will use NEON to conduct real-time ecological studies spanning all levels of biological organization and temporal and geographical scales. NSF disciplinary and multi-disciplinary programs will support NEON research projects and educational activities. Data from standard measurements made using NEON will be publicly available.” (NSF 04549, 2004) For more information visit www.neoninc.org.
