Background to NEON     NEON Objectives     History of NEON - Planning Workshops

The objectives of NEON are:

• To provide a state-of-the-art national facility for field biologists to conduct cutting edge research spanning all levels of biological organization from molecular genetics to whole ecosystem studies and across scales ranging from seconds to geological time and from microns to kilometers;

• To interconnect the geographically distributed parts of the facility into one virtual installation via communication networks so that members of the field biology research community can access the facility remotely; and

• To facilitate predictive modeling of biological systems via data sharing and synthesis efforts by users of the facility.

Like the use of vessels in oceanography or telescopes in astronomy, NEON will set in place observatories to "deploy" infrastructure for comprehensive, integrated measurements and analysis of ecological systems. In effect, by co-locating biological research infrastructure, NEON observatories will enable state-of-the-art investigations in field biology. By creating a network of 10 observatories with common interdisciplinary research infrastructure and protocols, NEON will accomplish a number of important objectives that can not be achieved with current infrastructure and organization. The diversity of ecosystems that comprise our national landscape, from forests to grasslands and deserts to tundra, precludes using only a single observatory for biocomplexity research. NEON in total will constitute a distributed and virtual national laboratory for field biology. NEON will foster integrated, interdisciplinary research through long-term collaborations and data sharing. NEON is needed to understand how our nation’s ecosystems function and to predict their response to natural and anthropogenic events. NEON will also systematically and directly support application of new technologies (e.g., functional genomics, molecule-specific stable isotopes) to advance ecological research.

Each NEON observatory will contain a suite of common instruments for continental-scale measurement and analysis. In addition, each observatory will have unique infrastructure to address site-specific research questions.

Intensive studies at each observatory will be facilitated by standardized equipment for integrated field research (e.g., high resolution global positioning grid arrays, mesonet scale meteorological equipment, eddy flux correlation towers, hydrological facilities) and laboratory analyses (e.g. confocal microscopes, DNA sequencers, stable isotope mass spectrophotometers, CHN Analyzers, ultracold tissue archives, and digital museum technology). The observatories will have scalable computation capabilities and will be networked via satellite and landlines to the vBNS, to each other, and to specialized facilities, such as the supercomputer centers.

NEON will provide a superb platform for educational uses and outreach. Biological field stations, potential affiliates of NEON observatories, are heavily used by K-12 students, undergraduate students, and the general public. NEON communications and research facilities will introduce students at all levels to cutting-edge ecological research. Many experimental research sites managed by potential NEON members are located close to community colleges, land-grant colleges, and HBCUs. In addition to its value for scientific and education purposes, NEON activities will develop a wide range of data that will be of value to a broad array of users. The general public will be able to access NEON databases, as will decision-makers.

NEON sites will be chosen via competitive proposals from consortia involving field stations and/or marine laboratories, Long-Term Ecological Research sites, universities and colleges, and natural history archives. Connections to advanced computational facilities and environmental networks maintained by other Federal agencies will be encouraged, as will interactions with similar activities that are being developed in other countries