The closing date for applications for the NSF Division Director, Division of Environmental Biology (Directorate for Biological Sciences) has been extended to May 10, 2011, see the "Solicitations" section for details.  Member representatives please note: this year's annual membership meeting will be in Boulder, CO on the week of September 12, details are forthcoming.  The introductory NEON overview webinar for the month of May (see right hand tool bar) will continue to adopt the "data intensive science" theme.   

Welcome New Member Institutions

• Lynchburg College, Greg Eaton
• Stroud Water Research Center, David Arscott 
• University of Massachusetts, Jeffrey Blanchard 
• University of Houston, William Carter

NEWS@NEON Spring 2011 Edition Published

The Spring 2011 Edition of NEWS@NEON (released quarterly) is now available.  This edition includes:

• NEON's first prototype citizen science project: Project Budburst 
• Primer on NEON's continental stratification approach  
• Dave Schimel testifies before House Appropriations Subcommittee 

Community Event at NEON's Prototype Site in Sterling, CO

NEON, Inc. and Colorado State University (CSU: a NEON, Inc. Member Institution) hosted a community event in Sterling, CO on April 27, 2011 to celebrate the completion of NEON's prototype site.  The site is located on a farm owned by Gilbert and Violet Lindstrom, who have been long-time supporters of research on their property.  The event was hosted at CSU's recently opened Northeast Regional Engagement Center in Sterling.   

Eugene Kelly (Member Representative for CSU), David Schimel (CEO, NEON, Inc.), and Lou Swanson (Vice President for Engagement and Director of Extension, CSU) provided brief remarks at the event.  Mr. and Mrs. Lindstrom were presented a plaque memento by David Schimel as a token of appreciation for being active supporters of NEON and agriculture-related research on their property.   

Attendees were then taken on a tour of the site, with Mr. and Mrs. Lindstrom providing detailed background about how they manage their lands, and NEON, Inc. staff providing details on science, engineering, and construction related activities at that site.  Attendees included representatives from the offices of Senator Udall (D-CO), Senator Bennet (D-CO), Rep. Gardner (R-CO, 4th District), USDA ARS, CSU, and other institutions.

NEON, Inc. Member Institutions at the Interface of Science and Policy 

Thank you to those Member Representatives who have provided input on a University of Maryland (UMD) School of Public Policy graduate student project to assess how NEON data can be used to inform policy and resource management questions.  Over the past few months, UMD graduate students Alli Barra Srinivas (Defenders of Wildlife) and Eugene Russo (Nature) have been working on a project as part of their Public Policy thesis.  They chose to examine potential pathways for NEON data to be utilized as inputs in scientific assessments that ultimately inform policy development and program implementation.  The project includes literature reviews and phone interviews with individuals from NEON, Inc. Member Institutions, Federal agencies, and NGOs.  The study uses the Farm Bill to provide context for parts of the analysis.  Alli and Gene recently presented their preliminary findings before a group of Washington State University (WSU: a NEON, Inc. Member Institution) IGERT students.

NEON, Inc. and the Ecological Society of America (ESA: a NEON, Inc. Member Institution) hosted a visit by seven WSU IGERT students at ESA HQ in Washington DC on April 19, 2011.  The NSPIRE IGERT Program is a multidisciplinary student doctoral training program designed to create a new generation of scientists with broad and rigorous training in nitrogen cycling who seamlessly integrate nitrogen cycle science for effective communication with public policy makers.  The IGERT students, together with their faculty mentors, spent a week in Washington DC as part of their training program.  Katherine McCarter (Executive Director, ESA) provided an overview of ESA's role in fostering interaction at the science - policy interface.  Brian Wee (Chief of External Affairs, NEON, Inc.) interacted with the students on NEON matters, and UMD graduate students Alli and Eugene presented preliminary findings from their study.

NEON, Inc. also lent a supporting role in the recent Biological and Ecological Sciences Coalition (BESC) Congressional Visits Days organized by the American Institute of Biological Sciences (AIBS: a NEON, Inc. Founding Member Institution) and ESA on March 30 - 31, 2011.  As some readers may recall, NEON, Inc. also took part in the first ever Climate Science Day on Capitol Hill (February 16 - 17, 2011) that involved Member Institutions Harvard Forest, the Science and Engineering Alliance (SEA), the University of Alabama, the University of Idaho, and the University of Virginia.   

Says Clarisse Hart (Harvard Forest) whose team met with the offices of seven senators and representatives from four Northeastern states:  "The first meeting of the morning set the tone for the successful day; Senator Scott Brown's (R-MA) office staffer shook our hands, thanked us for an informative meeting, and said, 'We'll definitely be calling you.'"  Mahetemet Gebremedhin (SEA) from the same team related the experience as "Quite nothing like it to see myself amongst groups of concerned fellow scientists taking part in an effort organized to increase Members of Congress and their staffers' level of awareness about climate science. Leveraging my colleague's knowledge, the visit for me was an opportune time in driving the impact message home so passionately I uphold: connecting the dots between climate change and its impact on agriculture."

USDA Forest Service Pacific Southwest Research Station and Carnegie Institution Develop High-Resolution Carbon Mapping Techniques

A team of scientists from the Carnegie Institution for Science's Department of Global Ecology and the USDA Forest Service's Pacific Southwest Research Station (PSW) has developed new, more accurate methods for mapping carbon in Hawaii's forests. Their research appears in an online issue of the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment.  Combining field measurements, airborne Light Detection And Ranging (LiDAR)-based observations, and satellite-based imagery, the team developed a 30-meter-resolution map of aboveground carbon density spanning 40 vegetation types found on the one million-hectare Island of Hawaii. The team estimated a total of 28.3 million tons of carbon sequestered in aboveground woody vegetation on the island, which is 56 percent lower than estimates by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that were not intended to resolve carbon variation at fine spatial scales.  

The approach reveals fundamental ecological controls over carbon storage, including the role of climate, introduced species, and land-use change, and provides a fourfold decrease in regional costs of carbon measurement over using only those samples collected in the field.  This new approach moves well beyond merely sampling the carbon contained in forests of a given region and/or forest type with relatively few forest inventory plots. Now, these researchers can-by correlating plot-based estimates of forest C mass with LiDAR measures of canopy structure-actually measure forest C across a wide diversity of environmental and forest conditions.  The Forest Service press release can be accessed here, and the full article can be accessed here.

NEON will build and operate three Airborne Observation Platforms (AOP), each of which comprises a waveform-LiDAR altimeter, an imaging spectrometer, and a high-resolution digital camera.  The AOP units will be used for annual aerial campaigns to acquire data to enable the estimation of vegetation biochemical and biophysical properties, cover type and fraction, vegetation structure, sub-canopy topography, biomass, land-use / land-cover, and other measurements.  The right-hand-side "NEON Informational Toolbox" provides a link to a 5-minute YouTube overview video of the AOP.  A more technical version of the same video (4 minutes) is also available.