Project Office News: August 2005
Webcasting the Details: NEON's Design at the Halfway Point
| Members of the NEON Senior Management Team and Advisory Board presented a detailed planning update of the proposed National Ecological Observatory Network at a special session of the Ecological Society of America conference in Montréal on August 10, 2005. The webcast and slide shows cover the NEON science mission, infrastructure, integrated science and education plan, the role of embedded networked sensing in NEON, and more. [Connect to the webcast.] | |
Posted by djohnson on Friday August 26, at 12PM
First Draft Yields 20 Climate Domains for NEON
 | In recent meetings, the National Network Design Committee has explored the idea that NEON's observatory infrastructure should gather data across land use types reflecting a gradient of human influence and transitions from terrestrial to aquatic landscapes. A second consideration is to span the range of climate types across the United States. To that end, committee members have defined 20 climatic domains by using a cluster analysis of climate state variables, combined with airmass seasonality data, to create zones of similar climate. Two views of the 20 zones show the climate domains overlaid on an elevation map and state boundaries. While the ongoing NEON design process could generate revisions in the future, here's a snapshot of the current maps (pdf; 1.8MB). Tech-savvy visitors can access the Shapefile (370kB) and EOO Interchange Format (372 kB). |
Posted by djohnson on Friday August 19, at 12PM
NEON Modeling Workshop Delivers Recommendations
Twenty-five experts from government and academe have produced a report exploring the various ways that modeling could be an explicit part of the National Ecological Observatory Network. Attendees of the NSF-sponsored workshop focused on implementing modeling throughout NEON -- in education and outreach, and as a means of linking NEON data to NEON questions. Specific recommendations include creating a NEON Forecast Center and a modeling component for observatory design and ongoing operations. The modeling workshop was held July 18-20, 2005 and hosted by The Ecosystems Center, Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, Massachusetts. [ Documents | Workshop reports and white papers ]
Posted by djohnson on Tuesday August 16, at 2PM
An Insider's View of NEON Design
"Never has an equivalent of NASA been launched to study our very own planet," writes Dr. Margaret Lowman in a HeraldTribune.com article titled " Nature's Secrets." That's the scale at which the National Ecological Observatory Network will operate, says Lowman, an expert in forest canopy ecology and Director of Environmental Initiatives at New College of Florida. As NEON reaches the mid-point of its planning process, Lowman looks back at the first meeting of the 160-member NEON Design Consortium in Los Angeles in January, 2005. Meg Lowman has served NEON as a member of the Informal Education Subcommittee and the National Network Design Committee.
Posted by djohnson on Tuesday August 16, at 12PM