Welcome Rochester Institute of Technology
|
The NEON, Inc. Board of Directors is pleased to welcome our latest institutional member: the Rochester Institute of Technology's Chester F. Carlson Center for Imaging Science / Digital Imaging and Remote Sensing.
Founded in 1829, the Rochester Institute of Technology is a privately endowed, coeducational university with nine colleges and institutes emphasizing career education and experiential learning. Its student body population numbers approximately 17,000, and RIT's campus occupies over 1,300 acres in suburban Rochester, the third-largest city in New York. RIT will be represented by Dr. Jan van Aardt, whose interests include the application of imaging spectroscopy and LiDAR for spectral-structural characterization of natural systems, integrated modeling approaches, and scaling of natural resources remote sensing solutions through sensor inter-operability. |
| Membership Meeting Roadmap Synthesis Released | The feedback provided by the participants of the 2010 NEON, Inc. Membership Meeting was synthesized and released earlier this week. Participants noted that it was challenging to think forward for NEON, Inc. over the next ten years, and that many of the questions identified through the roadmap process may be more easily answered after the Observatory is constructed. It was suggested that NEON, Inc. has an important role in facilitating interactions and networking among its members, Observatory sites, other observatory systems, and federal agencies. NEON, Inc. could also play a role in helping to match research resources with research needs and opportunities. Click here for more details.
|
| DOI North Central Climate Science Center Announced | |
Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar recently announced that the Department of the Interior's (DOI) North Central Climate Science Center (CSC) will be operated by a consortium of universities headed by Colorado State University (CSU) in Fort Collins, CO.
In September 2009, Secretary Salazar initiated a coordinated climate change strategy by establishing the regional CSCs as well as a network of "Landscape Conservation Cooperatives" (LCCs) that engage federal agencies, local and state partners, and the public in crafting practical, landscape-level strategies for managing climate change impacts on natural resources. To date, CSCs for Alaska, Southeast, Northwest, and the North Central regions of the US have been identified. NEON, Inc. member institutions named in CSC consortia or involved as consortia partners include: Arizona State University, Colorado State University, Kansas State University, Montana State University, Oregon State University, University of Arizona, University of California Los Angeles, University of California Merced, University of Colorado Boulder, University of Idaho, University of Montana, and the University of Washington.
Under a draft framework developed with the Department of Interior, NEON, Inc. is committed to working closely with DOI / USGS to define a coordinated mechanism that would make NEON data and data management capability, workflow environment for complex models and algorithms, and data publishing capability available to all DOI CSCs. The CSCs can serve a valuable role in helping to translate NEON data and science results to the community of stakeholders who rely on the DOI for key decision support. |
Michael Keller Back with the USDA Forest Service
| |
Many of you have interacted with Michael Keller (Chief of Science) over the past few years. Michael has left NEON to take up a very exciting post with the Forest Service's International Programs. He played a critical role in NEON's development, leading the development of site selection, the development of detailed science requirements, the data products lists and catalog and the level 4 data products model, not to mention countless other critical tasks. Much of what NEON will become is a direct result of Michael's scientific excellence and judgment and we will all benefit from this legacy. Please join us in wishing him well in his important new role. |
NSF Wiki for ADBC Collaboration
| |
The Directorate for Biological Sciences recognizes the need to facilitate communication among diverse principal investigators, especially for new, highly collaborative programs such as Advancing Digitization of Biological Collections (ADBC). NSF has set up a Wiki to facilitate and increase the number of collaborations among potential principal investigators in developing their proposals for this competition. On the Wiki, researchers, collection managers and others will be able to briefly describe their expertise and interest in developing collaborative proposals. Questions regarding the ADBC solicitation, FAQs or Wiki should be sent by e-mail to biodigit@nsf.gov. |
| NCEAS Undergrad Synthesis Project |
The National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) is currently putting together an undergraduate ecology synthesis project. They are looking for undergraduate students in Ecology, Plant Ecology, Conservation Biology, or other upper-level courses who would like to participate. This year's project is an analysis of the predictors of plant invasion in U.S. National Wildlife Refuges, based on the data in the NWR Invasive Species survey. Students will use the NWR database to analyze the data for their own region, then contribute their data to the
overall analysis. Click here for more information.
|
Solicitations of Potential Interest to the NEON Community
|
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.
 Cyber-Enabled Discovery and Innovation (CDI)- Excerpt: CDI seeks ambitious, transformative, multidisciplinary research proposals within or across the following three thematic areas: (1) From Data to Knowledge: enhancing human cognition and generating new knowledge from a wealth of heterogeneous digital data; (2) Understanding Complexity in Natural, Built, and Social Systems: deriving fundamental insights on systems comprising multiple interacting elements; and (3) Virtual Organizations: enhancing discovery and innovation by bringing people and resources together across institutional, geographical and cultural boundaries.
- Critical dates: See NSF website
- Ecology of Infectious Diseases (EID)
- Excerpt: The goal of the Ecology of Infectious Diseases (EID) activity is to fund the development of predictive understanding of the transmission dynamics and evolution of infectious agents through the discovery of general principles and processes, and the building of models. To that end, research should focus on understanding the ecological, evolutionary and socio-ecological determinants of transmission by vectors or abiotic agents, the population and evolutionary dynamics of reservoir species, the dynamics of social and economic systems, and transmission to humans, other animals or plants, and recognize that the interactions of disease-causing agents, their hosts, and the environment are usually embedded within complex systems.
- Critical dates: December 15, 2010
- Dynamics of Coupled Natural and Human Systems (CNH)
- Excerpt: The Dynamics of Coupled Natural and Human Systems (CNH) Program supports basic research and related activities that enhance fundamental understanding of the complex interactions within and among natural and human systems. CNH focuses on the complex interactions among human and natural systems at diverse spatial, temporal, and organizational scales. CNH seeks to advance basic knowledge about the system dynamics -- the processes through which systems function and interact with other systems. CNH-supported projects must examine relevant natural AND human systems. Proposals cannot focus solely or largely on either human systems or on natural systems. Projects also must examine the full range of coupled interactions and feedbacks among relevant systems. The arrows in the accompanying figure symbolize these relationships.
- Critical dates: See NSF website
- 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.
- Informal Science Education (ISE)
|
|
Key Dates in 2010
| 11/15 - 11/17: NEON STEAC Meeting in Boulder, CO
12/12 - 12/17: AGU Meeting in San Francisco
|
|
