New Prototype Site Underway in Domain 10
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Development of the prototype site in Domain 10 (Central Plains) has begun. The site is located near Sterling, CO, approximately 105 miles east of Fort Collins. Situated on private farmland, it is one of the five sites with an agriculture theme arrayed across different ecoclimatic gradients. The prototype site will help NEON staff test the
capabilities of a fully operational site, and "productionalize" (or, "industralize") our approach to replicating the NEON design across the country. Click here to read the rest of the story.
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White House OSTP Associate Director Speaking at Membership Meeting
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Dr. Sherburne Abbot (Associate Director
Energy and Environment, White House Office of Science and Technology
Policy) is slated to give the noon keynote at the NEON, Inc. membership meeting at USGS HQ (Reston, VA) on 9/24/10. Other invited speakers include Drs. Ann Bartuska (USDA), Tom Armstrong (DOI), and Gary Foley (US EPA). The meeting is held annually for NEON, Inc. member institutions in good standing. Details of the membership meeting are available here.
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NEON hosts FORECAST RCN Meeting
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NEON hosted the NSF funded FORECAST Research Coordination Network (RCN) annual meeting at the NEON, Inc. HQ in Boulder, CO. The FORECAST network will (i) involve students, post-docs, and
early-career scientists to enhance the development and propagation of
new methodologies, (ii) develop web-based data portals for scientists to
share techniques and ideas, (iii) stimulate interactions among
ecologists, computer scientists, statisticians, and mathematicians, and
(iv) provide broad multidisciplinary training for minority students and
post-docs on data assimilation and ecological forecasting. The full abstract for the project is available here.
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NEON on the International Scene
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Dave Schimel (CEO) has been tapped to lead the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme's (IGBP) Analysis, Integration, and Modeling of the Earth System (AIMES) project. Synthesizing and integrating related data sets to provide a synoptic assessment of the environment at different scales is fraught with precision, uncertainty, semantic, and technical challenges. There is also a recognized need to further align in-situ, airborne, and space-based observations. The AIMES task force will identify a set of integrative science issues and questions and the required measurements to support them, with the overall objective of formulating an integrated observation strategy. The original PDF article can be accessed here. |
Science and Policy Communications Workshop
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The Heinz Center for Science, Economics, and the Environment recently established the Institute for Science Communication and Policy Development. The Institute, headed up by former NEON post-doc Dr. Kit Batten, creates training programs for scientists and policy makers to help participants develop relationships and working partnerships toward the end goal of ensuring that scientific findings effectively inform public policy decisions. NEON looks forward to partnering the the Institute to further advance the role of environmental informatics in informing national policy.
The first training session is being held at at the University of California Davis (September 19 - 23), targeted at scientists from universities, NGOs, and Federal agencies who work primarily on carbon sequestration issues in California. Various professionals who work on California policy issues will be invited to interact with participants. Applications are due end of August. The second training session will be held at Colorado State University (November 14 - 18), applications are due on October 15. Please visit the Institute's website for more details. |
Solicitations of Potential Interest to the NEON Community
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Please click the respective links to check the original source of information. The abbreviated text below may not reflect amendments to the original announcements, and may not reflect the original intent of the solicitation.
The "New" icons refer to recent new announcements (includes announcements for regular solicitations), and not necessarily new programs. These are primarily, though not limited to, NSF solicitations. Not all new announcements are included in the list below.
 Advancing Digitization of Biological Collections (ADBC)
- Excerpt: This program seeks to create a national resource of digital data documenting existing biological collections and to advance scientific knowledge by improving access to digitized information (including images) residing in vouchered scientific collections across the United States. The information associated with various collections of organisms, such as geographic distribution, environmental habitat data, phenology, information about associated organisms, collector field notes, tissues and molecular data extracted from the specimens, etc. is a rich resource for providing the baseline from which to further biodiversity research and provide critical information about existing gaps in our knowledge of life on earth.
- Critical dates: December 10, 2010.
- Opportunities for Enhancing Diversity in the Geosciences
- Excerpt: The Directorate for Geosciences (GEO) supports research and education in the Earth, Ocean, Atmospheric, and Geospace Sciences. The Opportunities for Enhancing Diversity in the Geosciences (OEDG) Program is designed to address the fact that certain groups are underrepresented in the geosciences relative to their proportions in the general population. The primary goal of the OEDG Program is to increase participation in the geosciences by African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Native Americans (American Indians and Alaskan Natives), Native Pacific Islanders (Polynesians or Micronesians), and persons with disabilities. A secondary goal of the program is to increase the perceived relevance of the geosciences among broad and diverse segments of the population.
- Critical dates: See website.
- Future Research in the Social, Behavioral & Economic Sciences
- Excerpt: At the end of the first decade of the 21st century, the social, behavioral, and economic sciences face extraordinary opportunities to address next-generation research challenges. The landscape is vast and complex, stretching across temporal and spatial dimensions and multiple levels of analysis -- from studying the human brain to implications of decision making in a dynamic and fragmented yet interconnected world. As we look forward 10 or even 20 years, the Directorate for the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences of the National Science Foundation (NSF/SBE) seeks to frame innovative research for the year 2020 and beyond that enhances fundamental knowledge and benefits society in many ways.
- Critical dates: September 30, 2010.
- Macrosystems Biology
- Excerpt: NSF invites proposals from interdisciplinary
teams of scientists to conduct innovative, integrated, systems-oriented
"macrosystems biology" research to detect, understand and forecast the
consequences of climate and land use change and invasive species on the
biosphere at regional to continental scales. Proposals should address
the scales where the ecological research challenges are the greatest and
where research has the greatest potential to transform the field of
ecology by addressing scaling issues that have long hindered development
of large-scale ecology. Projects should strive to provide a mechanistic understanding of how
multiple scale dynamics contribute to the structure, functioning, and
change of the biosphere, and lead to the development of a more
predictive understanding of ecological change. Proposals should be well
grounded in theory, include novel approaches that will result in a
theoretical framework for a predictive understanding of macroscale
biology, and shows great promise for enhancing basic theoretical
understandings.
- Critical dates: Full proposal due September 16, 2010.
- Informal Science Education (ISE)
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Excerpt: The ISE program supports innovation in anywhere, anytime, lifelong learning, through investments in research, development, infrastructure, and capacity-building for STEM learning outside formal school settings. Critical dates: Full proposals due: December 7, 2010.
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Key Dates in 2010
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09/22-23: NEON, Inc.
Board of Directors Meeting (Reston, VA)
09/23: Evening Reception for Membership (Reston, VA)
09/24: NEON, Inc. Annual Member's Meeting (Reston, VA)
09/22-26: OBFS Annual Meeting (U. Mich. Biological Station)
10/14-15: AERC Annual Meeting (Washington, DC)
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