February 2019
The Macrosystems Biology and NEON-Enabled Science (MSB-NES) Program of the National Science Foundation will host a Webinar to explain the new MSB-NES solicitation (NSF 19-538) and the Dear Colleague Letter (NSF 19-031) encouraging proposals for Research Coordination Networks.
  
Webinar Details: Wednesday, February 6 at 2:00 PM EST (1:00 CST, 12:00 MST, 11:00 PST). 15-20 minutes of pre-recorded description of the program solicitation and NEON resources, followed by 30+ minutes of questions and answers. This Webinar will be recorded and posted for later viewing.
Presenters: Mike Binford, Dan Gruner, Roland Roberts, and Matt Kane of NSF; Kate Thibault, Chris McKay, Claire Lunch, Megan Jones, and Gene Kelly of the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON).
How to Participate: Advance registration is recommended. You can register just before the meeting but might experience delays because of too many people registering at the same time.

RECENT UPDATES
Observatory Director Note
This past week marked my first official week rejoining the NEON project, this time as Acting Observatory Director. I’m excited to be back with the project as we complete construction later this quarter. Currently the project is 99.5% complete and on budget, and new data continue to come online.
 
In my new role, I will focus on broader, deeper outreach with the ecological community, ultimately ensuring that we’re successfully producing the highest quality environmental and ecological data for use by the ecological community.
 
As you can see below, we have a lot of great things happening across the network. Take a read and drop me a note if you have thoughts.

Sincerely, Gene Kelly
Construction: The Final Field Sites
With the completion of our Yellowstone National Park field sites in late 2018, 99% of the NEON observatory infrastructure has now transitioned from construction to operations. Battelle’s final construction work is wrapping up at two California field sites ( TEAK and TECR ), and our final terrestrial field site, PUUM , located in the Pu’u Maka’ala Natural Area Reserve in Hawaii is expected to be completed this spring. Our last Domain Support Facility, D20 in Hilo, Hawaii, also became operational in December. The office is located in the USFS Pacific Southwest Research Station Institute of Pacific Islands Forestry facility. We are delighted to have the field office co-located with other members of the local scientific community.

Data Now Available from all 81 Field Sites
With construction 99.5% complete, NEON is successfully publishing a variety of data from all 81 field sites. Data collection during construction began at different times for every data product and every site, and data pipelines were built in parallel with early data collection. As a result data availability and latency varies by data product and field site. Over the course of 2019, expect to see large amounts of backlogged data published to the portal. Please note that a calibration error affected automated instrument data collected after January 2018. All impacted data have been removed for reprocessing and will soon be republished to the data portal . To learn more about impacted data products as well as types of new data published each month, visit our Data Portal News page .

Each field season, thousands of samples are collected and archived from each NEON field site. Need a bulk order of ground beetles? How about some frozen soil samples? Or a selection of well-preserved small mammal specimens? Now, you can check out these and dozens of other biological sample types from the NEON Biorepository.

UPCOMING EVENTS & OPPORTUNITIES
Battelle is actively hiring seasonal field technicians to assist our full-time field science staff with observational sampling. NEON field sites are located in 24 states across the U.S and Puerto Rico; and the sites are located in some of the nation’s most pristine and wild areas. These opportunities are perfect for up-and-coming scientists who want valuable fieldwork experience collecting data for a continental-scale ecology project.

COLLABORATIONS AND RESEARCH
To build better models of watershed processes and calibrate remote sensing data with observations on the ground, a diverse team of researchers spent two weeks this summer gathering soil and vegetation data from hundreds of individual sites within the East River watershed near Crested Butte, CO while the NEON Airborne Observation Platform collected remote sensing data from above.

Ecological data collected in the field gives researchers a window into how ecosystems and climate are changing in a particular area. But to see the bigger picture, you have to take a step back—way back. All the way to space. Learn more about how researchers are using NEON data to verify that the satellite-derived time series data we are getting from above are accurate and reliable over time.

Ticks—and the diseases they carry—are on the move throughout much of the United States. The NEON project is tracking the spread of tick species and pathogens as part of our  Terrestrial Organismal Sampling  data collection efforts. These data will help researchers understand how different species of ticks respond to changes in climate patterns, land use, and the spread of different plant and animal species.

In addition to open access data and archival samples, NEON infrastructure may also be used for additional research activities. Use of infrastructure includes requesting an airborne remote sensing survey, adding instruments to existing field site infrastructure, requesting the collection of additional field observations and samples, and deploying a NEON Mobile Deployment Platform (MDP). These activities can be requested through the NEON Assignable Assets program.