NEON Workshop Reports Available Online

The American Institute of Biological Sciences held a series of six workshops from March - September 2004 that focused on the scientific objectives of the proposed National Ecological Observatory Network. Five reports generated by the NEON workshops are now available online. (The sixth report on biodiversity and ecosystem functioning will be posted shortly.)

NEON Science Workshop Series reports

Each NEON summer workshop focused on a broad ecological theme or challenge of national importance:

• Invasive species
• Ecological aspects of biogeochemical cycles
• Biodiversity and ecosystem functioning
• Ecological implications of climate change
• Land use and habitat alteration
• Ecology and evolution of infectious disease

For each workshop, experts from the prospective NEON community were asked to identify the key scientific questions that could best be addressed by a distributed and integrated ecological research facility, such as NEON. Attendees also suggested the kind of infrastructure that would be needed to meet the essential technological and scientific requirements of the research questions they identified. The recommendations of the six workshops are helping to shape the ultimate design and implementation of the National Ecological Observatory Network.

Posted by djohnson on Friday November 19, at 8AM.