As outlined in our recent news article on prototyping, NEON staff are busy this summer traveling to different site locations to test equipment and supplies, study how the sites will be built and run, develop contacts and essentially smooth the process for entering and building future sites. Here are a few highlights from the summer’s work.

AOP in Alaska
The AOP team spent two weeks in Alaska this summer, primarily in or around Anchorage, Fairbanks, and Deadhorse.  The team gathered information about the airports there that will help NEON determine flight logistics as well as better understand what sort of science interests stand out for particular regions.  In addition, the team spent some time at the Toolik Field Station, one of NEON’s core sites, while visiting nearby airstrips.

FIU Needs a Vacation
The FIU team has barely been in the office this summer, with stops in Puerto Rico, Alaska, and California, to name a few.  The team has already completed site characterization field surveys in 15 NEON domains, which includes determining where the tower will be placed at a given site, measuring soil temperature and soil water content, and surveying ecosystem structure.

FSU’s Got Some Bugs
FSU has completed eight weeks of beetle and mosquito sampling at the Domain 1 candidate core site in Harvard Forest, Massachusetts this summer.

We’re still clearing hurdles….

As you may have seen elsewhere, the National Science Board recently authorized the NSF director to award funding to NEON, Inc. over five years to construct the National Ecological Observatory Network. This is a remarkable outcome for the company and project team (and ecology in general), and makes the hard work and long hours over the past few years worthwhile. There are still a few more clearances needed (NEON has some environmental analysis actions to complete, NSF has to commit to starting the project, and Congress needs to apportion the money for construction), but – things are moving forward.

I’ve started thinking more about “when” things are going to happen, not “if,” and worrying about schedule milestones a few years away.

Here in Boulder we’re beginning some hiring to support the design, prototyping and risk reduction activities for the next year, and we’re currently outfitting a new 45,000 sq.ft technical facility to support our Instrument Assembly and Integration, Calibration/Validation/Audit and Airborne Observation Platform labs.

The project staff will double over the next year; we went through three (painful) doublings during 2008/2009, but we’re better prepared for growth now. Sometime recently we passed the point where I knew everyone… I think there are a few guys working down in the computing group I’ve never met (it’s dark and scary down there, but I’m going to have to go down there).  Getting the whole organization together used to take a small conference room.  Recently, we’ve had trouble squeezing everyone into a large auditorium. Keeping the team together and maintaining good communications when we split the organization into the headquarters building and technical facility building (the buildings are separated by about a mile) will be a priority for me this coming year.

Another activity ramping up now is discussions with the landowners and agencies who have kindly offered to host our sites, and examining environmental and design issues.  We completed the high-level observatory environmental analysis late last year, but the lead time on permits can be measured in months or years, so we’re underway across the entire country, talking to the landowners and other stakeholders.  Jody Bolyard (who is honcho-ing this process) and his team are on the phone and visiting sites, developing the relationships we need.  More design work at several sites is underway; our biggest issue seems to be providing grid power to a few relocatable sites, and this summer we’re going to look at solutions to this problem.  Field and stream sampling is occurring this summer and next, and we’re beginning our work on bioarchiving and DNA analysis.

In essence, we’re changing gears from “review” mode to “field” mode.

Finally, we’re observing as the political game plays out on impacts to science funding (new NSF director, possibly a continuing resolution on the budget late in the year, etc.).  We will keep you posted.

NEON recently found itself riding the radio waves via national talk radio and podcast.  Take a listen, below!

NEON CEO Dave Schimel chats about the effects of climate change on the changing of the seasons in this NPR story heard on Morning Edition on Earth Day, April 22.

Science reporter Elizabeth Pennisi discusses her recent story about NEON with Science Magazine podcast host Robert Frederick in the last story of the podcast.   The transcript of the interview (word doc format) is HERE.

It has been a long, productive year for the NEON team. 

2009 was the year when the diverse ideas and plans for a national ecological observatory generated by the scientific community since the late 90’s were assembled into a detailed project definition, which was then documented and reviewed – not an easy task. Between December 2008 and November 2009 we produced several thousand pages of project designs and estimates, and conducted more than a dozen reviews of different parts of the Observatory, ending in a successful NSF-led Final Design Review in November. In early February, we heard that the NSF has included us in their construction budget proposal to Congress for 2011 – exciting news, and the result the team deserved.

There are still several hurdles to clear before the Observatory becomes a reality, but all signs are good.

The central unifying theme of NEON design is ecological data products. These data products take on many forms – images from the airborne platform; population counts from human observers; automated readings from towers and sensors in our domain infrastructure; DNA analyses from commercial labs. Developing scientific methods to enable detection of long-term changes and trends in these data – i.e. observing both the drivers of and responses to climate change, land-use change, unsustainable water use and invasive species – is a core NEON goal. Combining these data to generate useful scientific information, increased understanding and support informed decision making is the key role of the Observatory in the future.

Our assembled team covers many fields of expertise. There are new challenges for all of us, and working together to develop the Observatory is exciting. My colleagues in ecology and biology are very familiar with the issues associated with field data acquisition; my background in astronomy involves larger data rates and more technical observatory operations; many of our engineering staff have manufacturing backgrounds. Many of our professional staff come from commercial backgrounds, and working for an organization where scientific issues can sometimes greatly impact major decisions is new.   For all of us, the fascinating complexity and volume of the data generated by a large-scale ecological observatory is new.

Reversing the natural tendency for all these diverse groups to fly apart is a big part of my job, and some days it keeps me busy. Some days I know all the answers; some days I don’t, but every day I feel the challenges and rewards of managing a project which will take ecology into a new era.  A new culture is arising.   

NEON sits in the middle of a web of federal and private partnerships. We greatly appreciate those organizations and institutions that are hosting our facilities and supporting our analyses. We are also very aware that our Observatory will be only one element among many different projects and facilities attacking these problems of national and global importance, and we look forward to working with all of them on the solutions. 

NEON will be one of the first MREFC projects to involve education planning/development from the very beginning, and we’re proud of that. We live in a time when difficult questions are being asked, and in all scenarios solutions will involve informed discussion and evaluation by citizens, so being able to use NEON information in real world decisions is a key goal we must achieve. NEON’s education team is already underway with prototype efforts to make this important goal a reality.

During 2010 we are going to launch several field and computing prototyping initiatives to minimize risk and prepare for construction. Assuming the project is approved, Observatory construction may begin in 2011, and is planned to last for five years. Though the long haul in 2009 was tiring, the team remains strong and enthused, and we’re looking forward to the task ahead.

As we move forward we will always need the advice and support of the community and the public, so we look forward to hearing from you.