National Ecological Observatory Network’s (NEON) future role in US carbon cycling and budgets

Abstract:

The US National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) is a National Science Foundation investment designed to observe the impacts of large-scale environment changes on the nation’s ecosystems for 30 years with rigorous consistency. NEON does this through the construction (and operations) of new physical infrastructure and data infrastructure distributed across the North American Continent. This includes 47 terrestrial and 32 aquatic sites.

Key to its design is its ability to provide ecosystem-scale carbon measurements of carbon stores, fluxes, processes—and the means to scale them from the local-to regional scales via remote sensed aircraft. NEON design NEON will be collecting these carbon data as a facility and providing openly providing them. NEON will not preform any high-level synthesis, rather the carbon data is an open resource for research, private and public communities, alike. Overall, these data are also harmonized with other international carbon-based infrastructures to facilitate cross-continental understanding and global carbon syntheses. Products, engagement and harmonization of data to facilitate syntheses will be discussed.