| 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 soon. If you meet the requirements for your lodgings to be covered by NEON, Inc. (see website for details), you will need to register before end of this week. If there are early career scientists who are still interested in applying for travel awards, please contact Brian Wee immediately.
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| NEON Developments | | News@NEON Fall '12 is now available. In this issue, we cover:
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| USDA LTAR Launched |
On September 10, the USDA announced the establishment of a Long Term Agro-ecosystem Research (LTAR) network. AAAS reports on the development by opening the article with "Hoping to emulate the success and ambition of ecological research networks, such as the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON)".
The purpose of the LTAR includes sustaining and enhancing agricultural production at large geographical scales to meet increasing demands for agricultural goods and services. The LTAR initially comprises ten USDA Agriculture Research Service (ARS) sites, three of which are co-located with NEON. Those sites are: the Northern Great Plains Research Laboratory (NEON relocatable site, Domain 9), Central Plains Experimental range (NEON core site, Domain 10), and the Jornada Experimental Range (NEON relocatable site, Domain 14).
NEON hosted a workshop in Boulder for a group of USDA scientists on September 12 - 13 to identify areas of alignment between the two environmental observatories. The LTAR Research Committee presented a draft overview of the LTAR shared research strategy. The NEON team mapped the LTAR and NEON components to demonstrate the parallels between the two approaches, and followed that up with overviews of the NEON science and engineering approach.
Contributing to this effort is Washington State University (a NEON, Inc. Founding Member Institution) NSF NSPIRE IGERT graduate student, Justin Pointsatte, who is stationed at the USDA ARS headquarters in the Washington DC metro area under the joint supervision of ARS and NEON.
This reflects a sustained effort by observatory networks in the US to collaborate with partners to create complementary, interoperable, national networks that leverage on each network's strengths and design objectives. Examples of on-going interactions between NEON and other networks include: the Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) network, the Organization of Biological Field Stations (OBFS), the National Phenology Network (USA NPN), and the National Atmospheric Deposition Program (NADP). These conversations will be continued in sessions at the 5th Annual NEON Inc Membership Meeting, which includes a plenary session on the USDA LTAR, and a panel discussion on integration between LTER, OBFS, USA NPN, and NEON. |
| Coastal Observatory Integration |
NEON was invited to participate in Smithsonian and NOAA workshops to discuss the scientific observation needs of the coastal community. These workshops, like the LTAR-NEON workshop described above, were convened to explore synergies between new and existing observation infrastructure.
The Smithsonian MarineGEO (Marine Global Earth Observatory) is envisioned as a network of coastal marine research sites encompassing the full range of ecological phenomena governed by latitude and anthropogenic activity. Five existing Smithsonian marine stations, including the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC: Domain 2, NEON relocatable site), are candidates for pilot MarineGEO sites. The NOAA Sentinel Site Program will utilize existing assets, programs, and resources in a place-based, issue-driven approach to ask and answer questions of local, regional, and national significance. It utilizes NOAA and its partner capabilities to apply monitoring and observation data to decision making.
The 2011 White House report "Sustaining Environmental Capital: Protecting Society and the Economy" similarly called for closer coordination between national environmental observation assets to provide the data and information that will enable protection of vital ecosystem services. The report also highlighted the role of eco-informatics in integrating such national assets.
NEON is excited to be part of the dialog as national environmental observatories align to better meet the needs of science and society through coordinated, interoperable observation systems and data systems. These conversations will be continued in sessions at the 5th Annual NEON Inc Membership Meeting, which includes a plenary session on the USDA LTAR, and a panel discussion on integration between LTER, OBFS, USA NPN, and NEON. |
| Science-Policy Panel Webinar |
The Boulder Earth and Space Sciences Informatics Group (BESSIG) and NEON are co-organizing a panel discussion on 2012-10-10 (Wednesday) titled "Informing Science Policy: the role for Scientists and Engineers" at the NEON HQ in Boulder, CO. BESSIG comprises a group of Earth and space science data users, data providers, data managers, and middleware providers whose goal is to improve the usage and thus the value of scientific data to improve the understanding of Earth and its systems.
Panelists include Alice Madden (Wirth Chair in Sustainable Development, School of Public Affairs, University of Colorado), Andy Schultheiss (District Director at Office of Congressman Jared Polis), Dan Baker (Director Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics), and Peter Backlund (National Center for Atmospheric Research [NCAR] Director of External Relations). The panel will be livecasted via the web, although the number of simultaneous viewers is limited to the first 24 viewers.
Date: 2012-10-10 (Wednesday)
Time: 4:00pm - 5:15pm (Mountain Time) (Please note the time zone)
Venue: NEON HQ, Boulder CO
Webinar link: http://goo.gl/jJV3n |
| Impacts of Sequestration |
Last August, Congress passed the Budget Control Act of 2011. Among other things, the law imposed a process known as sequestration to implement a total of $1.2 trillion in automatic spending cuts through fiscal year 2021 which will begin January 2, 2013, unless Congress passes a bill which the president signs to avert such a result.
Dr. Susan Stafford, president of the American Institute of Biological Sciences (AIBS: a NEON, Inc. Founding Member Institution) and Board member of NEON, Inc., expressed concern for the nation's scientific and educational systems if indiscriminate, across the board budget cuts are implemented in January 2013.
Read Dr. Stafford's full statement on the AIBS website. The AIBS website also offers a tool to contact your Member of Congress on this issue. |
| Environmental Sensor Use and Data Sharing |
Do you use or want to use electronic sensors in your field research but find data management and integration difficult? Do you want to better network with your colleagues who are collecting similar data?
A group at the University of Texas at El Paso is exploring ways to improve ecological data management and sharing to enhance collaborative networking. They need your help to better understand what is currently being done by field researchers across the US, particularly by small academic labs (but also by researchers in government agencies and other institutions). Understanding the landscape of how different labs collect, manage, and share data is becoming more important every year. Your time and effort are greatly appreciated, and results will be made publicly available after analysis.
Visit https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/ecodata to contribute to an important study for our community. |
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.  Ecology and Evolution of Infectious Diseases (EEID) - Excerpt: The Ecology and Evolution of Infectious Diseases program supports research on the ecological, evolutionary, and socio-ecological principles and processes that influence the transmission dynamics of infectious diseases. The central theme of submitted projects must be quantitative or computational understanding of pathogen transmission dynamics. The intent is discovery of principles of infectious disease transmission and on testing mathematical or computational models that elucidate infectious disease systems.
- Critical Dates: December 05, 2012
- Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP)
- Excerpt: The NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) provides Fellowships to individuals selected early in their graduate careers based on their demonstrated potential for significant achievements in science and engineering. Three years of support is provided by the program for graduate study that is in a field within NSF's mission and leads to a research-based master's or doctoral degree.
- Critical Dates: See NSF website.
- NSF Science, Engineering and Education for Sustainability Fellows (NSF SEES Fellows)
- Excerpt: Through the SEES Fellows Program, NSF seeks to advance science, engineering, and education to inform the societal actions needed for environmental and economic sustainability and human well-being while creating the necessary workforce to address these challenges. The Program's emphasis is to facilitate investigations that cross traditional disciplinary boundaries and address issues of sustainability through a systems approach, building bridges between academic inquiry, economic growth, and societal needs.
- Critical Dates: See NSF website.
- 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
- 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
- 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
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| Submit a Comment / Suggestion (Anonymous) | Submit a comment
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Key Dates in 2012
| 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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