| 2012 Fifth Annual NEON Inc Membership Meeting | The details of the Fifth Annual NEON, Inc. Membership Meeting (Washington DC, 2012-10-17 - 2012-10-18) are now available. The theme of this year's meeting is "Continental-scale ecology: informing our national priorities". This is the first joint annual meeting between the Association for Ecosystem Research Centers (AERC) and NEON, Inc.
If you intend to attend the meeting, please register by September 20. We are offering limited travel support for early career scientists. The due date for application is 2012-09-10. |
| NEON Developments | | News@NEON Summer '12 is now available. In this issue, we covered:
Other developments highlighted on the NEON, Inc. website include:
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NEON at ESA 2012
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There will be a variety of locations where you can find us and engage or ask questions over the course of the ESA 2012 conference this year.
We're organizing a series of WORKSHOPS during the week, starting Sunday, Aug. 5. We're leading an ORAL SESSION on Monday, Aug 6 [OCS B116], and presenting 20 posters for a POSTER SESSION on on Tuesday, Aug. 7.
We're also hosting a MIXER on Tuesday, Aug. 7 from 6:30-8pm; come enjoy free food on us! [Mt. St. Helens Room, Doubletree Hotel]
And of course, we'll be waiting to visit with you and answer questions at NEON exhibit booth #322 in the exhibit hall all week!
>Click for full list of events for NEON and NEON staff.
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Policy Section and Public Affairs Committee Mixer (Wednesday, August 8, 2012: 6:30 PM-8:00 PM, E145, Oregon Convention Center). The Policy Section was established in late 2010 based on the realization that a significant number of ESA members have or continue to work in some capacity on public policy at non-governmental organizations, on Capitol Hill, and with federal agencies. The Section extends a special invitation to the Student Section in recognition of the growing interest for young professionals to get involved in the science-policy arena.
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| AGU Session Proposals |
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NEON staff are convening special sessions at AGU this fall (San Francisco, 2012-12-03 - 2012-12-07). We invite you to submit abstracts (last day: 2012-08-08) for the following:
- GC018: Environmental Observatories: Challenges and Opportunities. The spatio-temporal complexity of environmental systems creates an urgent need for continental-scale observatories to address pressing scientific questions. Observatories provide a platform for the integration of sensors and field sampling allowing for scaling of data from local to continental scales. The resulting data require sophisticated information infrastructures able to ensure high quality data products and to facilitate the use of such data. To ensure success the community must benefit from the infrastructure and data products. This session focuses on engaging with the community to define the types of data generated, the ways in which the infrastructure and data can be used and inform future directives of large observatories.
- B025: Freshwater Systems in a Changing World: A New Frontier. Non-linear dynamics of ecosystem response to climate and environmental change has led to interdisciplinary research approaches. Freshwater systems are integrators of landscape scale biogeochemical processes. Changes observed in such ecosystems are reflective of a much larger change within the watershed and/or region. By combining advanced sensor techniques at different scales, an increase in areal resolution across landscapes can be obtained and be used as an early warning system. This session will provide a forum to discuss observations and modeling approaches that are pushing the frontiers of freshwater science in face of environmental and climate change.
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| DataONE Launches |
DataONE, the Data Observation Network for Earth, provides the technology capable of giving researchers access to globally distributed, networked data from a single point of discovery. July 2012 saw the official release of the DataONE cyberinfrastructure capable of enabling researchers to conduct an integrated search for earth and environmental data. As the these sciences evolve to be more data-intensive, discovering, integrating and analyzing massive amounts of heterogeneous information becomes critical to enable researchers to address complex questions about our environment and our role within it.
Data held by South Africa National Parks, the Knowledge Network for Biocomplexity, the Ecological Society of America, Dryad, Oak Ridge National Laboratories Distributed Active Archive Center, the United States Geological Survey, the Long Term Ecological Research Network, the Partnership for Interdisciplinary Studies of Coastal Oceans and the California Digital Library are currently searchable within DataONE with more organizations joining as members in the coming months.
DataONE facilitates researchers in fulfilling their need for data management and in providing secure and permanent access to their data. These needs are met by offering the scientific community a suite of tools and training materials that cover all aspects of the data life cycle from data collection, to management, to analysis and publication. |
| Opportunity: NIMBioS Postdoctoral Fellowships |
The National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis (NIMBioS) is currently accepting applications for postdoctoral scholarship at the interface between mathematics and biology.
NIMBioS is particularly interested in requests to support research that integrates diverse fields, requires synthesis at multiple scales, and/or makes use of or requires development of new mathematical/computational approaches. Support: annual stipend of $51,000, full University of Tennessee employee fringe benefits, and an annual travel allowance of $2,000. To apply, complete the online application and submit a brief project description, references, and CV following the guidelines on the NIMBioS website. |
| NSF and European Commission Establish New Collaboration Opportunities for Early Career Scientists |
The NSF and the European Commission (EC) recently signed an Implementing Arrangement to provide opportunities for NSF-funded early career scientists and engineers to pursue research collaborations with European colleagues supported through the European Research Council (ERC) awards.
The program draws upon the goals and objectives of the NSF Science Across Virtual Institutes program, which recognizes that scientific excellence exists around the world and connects researchers with common interests and goals across international borders. Under this new agreement, ERC-funded researchers will host U.S. scientists and engineers, initially those supported by NSF's CAREER awards for junior faculty and recipients of NSF's Postdoctoral Research Fellowships. See the NSF press release 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 indicate 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.  Critical Zone Observatories - Excerpt: NSF seeks proposals to establish a networked set of Critical Zone Observatories (CZOs) that will address pressing interdisciplinary scientific questions concerning geological, physical, chemical, and biological processes and their couplings that govern critical zone system dynamics. An overarching goal of the critical zone observatory network, which will be comprised of US-based sites (50 states plus territories), is to offer scalable and transferable information that could enhance the scale and scope of the knowledge building and societal benefits that will accrue beyond where the specific CZOs are located.
- Critical Dates: February 05, 2013
- NASA Research: Development and Testing of Potential Indicators For The National Climate Assessment
- Excerpt: NASA has made significant contributions to the U.S. National Climate Assessment (NCA), a central component of the 2012-2022 U.S. Global Change Research Program's Strategic Plan, and intends to continue supporting the NCA. Indicators are anticipated to be an important component of future NCAs. These indicators are intended to provide a clear and concise way of communicating to the NCA audiences about not only status and trends of physical drivers of the climate system, but also the ecological and socioeconomic impacts, vulnerabilities, and responses to those drivers. This ROSES element solicits contributions to enhance NASA's participation in future NCAs by encouraging the developing and testing of potential indicators that address the needs expressed in the NCA vision for a national system of indicators and that largely draw from NASA-produced data and/or modeling products.
- Critical Dates: See NASA website.
- EPSCoR Research Infrastructure Improvement Program Track-1: (RII Track-1)
- Excerpt: The Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) is designed to fulfill the mandate of the National Science Foundation (NSF) to promote scientific progress nationwide. The EPSCoR program is directed at those jurisdictions that have historically received lesser amounts of NSF Research and Development (R&D) funding. Thirty one jurisdictions, including twenty-eight states, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, Guam and the U. S. Virgin Islands are currently eligible to participate.
- Critical Dates: 2012-10-03
- Advances in Biological Informatics (ABI)
- Excerpt: The ABI program is especially interested in proposals that offer potentially transformative outcomes through the development of informatics tools and resources that (1) offer novel and significant advances in the use of biological data and/or (2) will enable and stimulate advances through their impact on a significant segment of the biological research community supported by the NSF BIO Directorate.
- Critical Dates: 2012-09-10; 2013-08-13
- Advancing Digitization of Biodiversity Collections (ADBC)
- Excerpt: This program seeks to enhance and expand the national resource of digital data documenting existing vouchered biological and paleontological collections and to advance scientific knowledge by improving access to digitized information (including images) residing in vouchered scientific collections across the United States.
- Critical Dates: 2012-10-19
- Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL)
- Excerpt: The Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) solicitation invites investigators to propose ideas, concepts, models, and other opportunities for learning and learning environments that will capture the creative and innovative potential of informal STEM learning for the future, and potentially forge new connections across all STEM learning communities. The ISE program expects to make approximately 34 awards based on anticipated funding of $20 million in FY 2013 for new awards. It is anticipated that approximately 6 Research, 6 Pathways, 13 Full-Scale Development, 2 Broad Implementation, plus approximately 7 conferences, EAGERS, and Rapids will be made as Standard or Continuing Grants, pending availability of funds.
- Critical Dates: Preliminary proposal (optional): 2012-08-14. Full proposal: 2013-01-14.
- Data Infrastructure Building Blocks (DIBBs)
- Excerpt: DIBBs is an integral part of NSF's CIF21 portfolio and seeks to provide support for the following research activities: (1) Conceptualization Awards are planning awards aimed at further developing disciplinary and interdisciplinary communities' understanding of their data storage and management requirements with the goal of developing an initial prototype; (2) Implementation awards will support development and implementation of technologies addressing a subset of elements of the data preservation and access lifecycle, including acquisition; documentation; security and integrity; storage; access, analysis and dissemination; migration; and deaccession; (3) Interoperability awards will develop frameworks that provide consistency or commonality of design across communities and implementation for data acquisition, management, preservation, sharing, dissemination, etc.
- Critical Dates: See NSF website.
- IGERT-CIF21
- Excerpt: Within the Cyberinfrastructure Framework for 21st Century Science and Engineering (CIF21) and IGERT, NSF recognizes the need to educate and support a next generation of researchers able to address fundamental challenges in 1) core techniques and technologies for advancing big data science and engineering; 2) analyzing and dealing with challenging computational and data enabled science and engineering (CDS&E) problems, and 3) researching, providing, and using the cyberinfrastructure that makes cutting-edge CDS&E research possible in any and all disciplines.
- Critical Dates: Full proposal: 2012-08-06.
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| Submit a Comment / Suggestion (Anonymous) | Submit a comment
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Key Dates in 2012
| 8/5 - 8/10: ESA Annual Meeting (Portland, OR)
9/30 - 10/5: EcoSummit 2012 (Columbus, OH)
10/17 - 10/18: NEON, Inc. Annual Meeting (Washington, DC)
10/18 - 10/19: AERC Annual Meeting (Washington, DC)
12/6 - 12/10: AGU Annual Meeting (San Francisco, CA) |
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