The latest from NEON

NEON, the National Ecological Observatory Network, is a major research instrumentation asset that the NSF has built for scientists investigating how the environment and ecosystems interact at a continental scale. Here is the latest from Observatory Director and Chief Scientist, Sharon Collinge. It’s really good to see that this project is coming to a successful fruition.

There’s no photo credit on the image because it’s my photo. I took it at the NEON tower at Harvard Forest in central Massachusetts. Among many data products being produced, one of the most exciting are carbon flux measurements using the eddy-flux methodology. These are important because they provide a window into an ecosystem as it essentially breathes, just like we do. And that has enormous implications for climate change.

The location of this particular NEON tower (one of many across the United States) is particularly interesting because there is also a very long time series (25 years or so) of such measurements produced by the Ameriflux Network. If NEON can take advantage of such older measurements in a way that calibrates rigorously between the two systems, the power of continental scale (3-dimensions) will be enriched by a fourth dimension, time.