Project Office News: April 2008
NEON Completes Selection of Candidate Sites
After conducting a detailed evaluation, NEON senior staff have selected candidate core site locations for the three domains where decisions had been pending: the Mid-Atlantic, the Great Lakes, and the Southern Plains.
National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON)
NEON Project Office
1444 I St. NW, Suite 200
Washington, DC 20005
Contact: Dan Johnson, 202/628-1500 x215
fax: 202/628-1509; cell: 703/615-7626
www.neoninc.org
April 29, 2008
Science staff from the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) have confirmed all 20 locations of Candidate Core Sites selected for the planned continental-scale ecological research platform.
The sites were chosen because they best represent the ecoclimatic characteristics of their respective domains. Selections were based on quantitative criteria developed by NEON, Inc. and colleagues with the US Forest Service and the US Geological Survey. Sixteen candidate sites are located in the US Lower 48; Alaska hosts two, and Hawaii and Puerto Rico have one site each.
"Each candidate site is designed to act as a detector in a national observatory, sensing a portion of the domain, much as a single detector in a digital camera detects information from a portion of the scene being photographed, while the whole megapixel array creates an image," said NEON CEO David Schimel.
Candidate site locations are now confirmed in three domains where decisions were pending--the Mid-Atlantic, Great Lakes, and Southern Plains. In the Mid-Atlantic, NEON staff selected the Smithsonian Institution Conservation Research Center in Front Royal, Virginia. For the Great Lakes domain, the choice was the University of Notre Dame Environmental Research Center/Trout Lake Biological Station in Boulder Junction, Wisconsin. In the Southern Plains, staff chose the Caddo and LBJ National Grasslands, Texas.
"We conducted a rigorous process to recommend candidate sites for the three remaining domains," said Dr. Michael Keller, NEON Chief of Science. "Our decision making was guided by a single set of requirements." Each candidate site was required to:
Be located in a wildland area representative of the vegetation, soils, landforms, climate, and ecosystems performance of its domain;
provide access to gradient and relocatable sites that respond to regional and continental-scale science questions;
meet the logistical and administrative criteria of year-round access, available permitting, and secure land tenure for 30 years; and
meet the technical criteria of unimpeded air space for regular air survey and potential for an experimental set-aside.
Beyond the required criteria, a second group of desirable considerations focused on logistical, administrative, and technical factors. These included site security, facilities for power and communications, knowledge of local land use history, and appropriate locations for micrometeorological flux and aquatic measurements, among other desirable features.
Next Step: Site Assessments
In 2007, four teams of ecological experts made initial visits to seven NEON Candidate Core Sites; now, detailed site assessments are under way. Thorough site evaluations in all 20 domains will enable NEON staff to refine the scientific, technical, logistical, and financial planning documents needed for upcoming NEON reviews.
The first round of site assessments began in late March with visits to two domains: Southeast, based at the Ordway-Swisher Biological Station in Gainesville, Florida, and Atlantic Neotropical, located at the Guanica Forest, Puerto Rico.
NEON is collaborating with the United States Geological Survey in the evaluation process, using USGS vegetation maps for the entire United States to establish a preliminary design for every candidate site. The maps are being shared with representatives at each location prior to the site visit.
"We have preliminary activities, mapping activities, and the actual visits," said Dr. Keller. "We will test the design during the actual visit, when we probe scientific and logistical matters on the ground. We will look at tower placements, vegetation plots, potential hazards, and limits to accessibility. We will also focus in detail on all of the Fundamental Sentinel Unit (FSU) activities." [The NEON FSU will measure soil and aquatic biogeochemistry in each domain, and track patterns and changes in a variety of organisms, including birds, fish, plants, small mammals, and microbes.]
Another important consideration for project staff and the NEON, Inc. Board of Directors is to make certain that Observatory activities have the least possible impact on the landscape during the estimated 30-year lifespan of the project. The objective is to monitor the environment, not to impact it.
"Good environmental stewardship goes hand in hand with good science," said Dr. Keller. "We want to be observing site characteristics, not site disturbance."
NEON has scheduled the next round of visits to five candidate sites in April and May, 2008. The itinerary includes a variety of US ecoclimatic domains: The Ozarks Complex, anchored in the Talladega National Forest, Alabama; Appalachians/Cumberland Plateau, located in the Walker Branch Watershed, Oak Ridge, Tennessee; Prairie Peninsula, at the Konza Prairie Biological Station, Manhattan, Kansas; Desert Southwest, anchored at the Santa Rita Experimental Range, Arizona; and the Pacific Northwest, at the Wind River Experimental Forest, Washington.
NEON is a continental-scale ecological observation platform for understanding and forecasting the impacts of climate change, land-use change, and invasive species on ecology. The Observatory will support a range of long-term ecological research activities and enhance the capacity of scientists to forecast future states of ecological systems affected by the changing environment.
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Note to Reporters: Contact Dan Johnson at 202/628-1500 x215 (or by cell: 703/615-7626) to arrange a telephone interview with NEON CEO David Schimel. For more about NEON, visit: www.neoninc.org
Posted by sdastvan on Tuesday April 29, at 10AM