| This Just In: Nominee for NSF Director Announced | Dr. France Anne Cordova has been nominated by the White House to serve as the next Director for the US National Science Foundation. Dr. Cordova is President Emerita of Purdue University, where she served as President from 2007 to 2012. Dr. Cordova received a B.A. from Stanford University and a Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology. Dr. Cordova is a current member of the National Science Board. The NSF Director's position is one that requires confirmation by the US Senate.
|
| 6th Annual Membership Meeting Registration Opens |
The Sixth Annual NEON, Inc. 2013 Meeting (Gainesville, FL) (2013-10-01 and 2013-10-02) marks the first annual meeting to be held in the proximity of a NEON site. The theme of this year's meeting is "Enabling Collaboration Across Communities".
Meeting participants can look forward to a Field Day at the Ordway-Swisher Biological Field Station to learn about sandhill ecosystems and the context of that location within the constellation of NEON sites. NEON civil construction is completed at Ordway-Swisher, and preliminary sensor installation is currently underway, so visitors will get a first-hand experience of standing within the footprint of a typical NEON site. Back at the meeting hotel, participants will take part in a community dialog about advancing the ecological sciences and fostering an emerging community to answer regional to continental-scale questions. These conversations will continue as half-day workshops with a focus on using NEON data to enable PI-lead projects.
This NEON, Inc. meeting is open to NEON, Inc. member institutions in good standing and invited guests. A small number of travel awards are available for early career scientists (advanced grad students, postdocs, or scientists in positions less than three years).
See the meeting website for details. Please register before 2013-09-09. |
| Limited Data Portal Release |
An early version of the NEON data portal with limited data is now live. At present, available data are limited, and we are eager to receive constructive feedback from our user community.
NEON data products undergo an iterative quality assurance program, and we want to make these products available as soon as feasible. Initially, in order to get data to our users quickly, "preliminary" data products will be released in the run-up to "provisional" and eventually "science grade" data. At the "preliminary" stage, data has undergone largely automated and possibly rudimentary quality control procedures, such as range checking or spike identification. See the related article in this update on "Paper on NEON Methodology for Sensor Data Quality Control".
This version of the NEON data portal gives you the option of including documentation about the data product that you download, including the Algorithm Theoretical Basis Document (ATBD) that describes how the quantities are calculated, the QA/QC measures applied, the uncertainty estimates around the quantities, and other information. This type of documentation allows the user to assess the quality of the data, and ultimately facilitates reproducability and repurposing of the data. To see the documentation, make sure to check the "Include relevant documents with any data download" when that option is provided to you.
Please note that this is an early version of the portal. We will collate, assess, and prioritize your feedback (accessible via the data portal). Future versions of the portal are released under a controlled schedule. Planned changes may therefore not be immediately apparent, even in a subsequent release of the portal. |
| NEON, Inc. Welcomes Two New At-Large Directors |
The NEON, Inc. Board of Directors is pleased to welcome two new At-Large Directors: Todd Saliman and Dr. Robert Chen.
Todd Saliman is the Vice President for Budget and Finance and Chief Financial Officer of the University of Colorado System. Todd Saliman has 20 years of experience working on public policy in our state. He served in the Cabinet for two Governors and is a former member of the Colorado General Assembly. Prior to joining the University of Colorado as the Vice-President of Budget and Finance and Chief Financial Officer for the C.U. System, Todd worked with a private government affairs company in Colorado. He also has several years of experience advocating on behalf of C.U. with Colorado policy makers.
Dr. Robert S. (Bob) Chen is director of CIESIN, the Center for International Earth Science Information Network, a research unit of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. He manages the NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC), part of NASA's network of earth science data centers. He also co-manages the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Data Distribution Center, which provides access to data and information from IPCC assessments and reports. He is also one of the co-chairs of the Indicators Work Group of the U.S. National Climate Assessment.
See the NEON, Inc. website for additional background on Todd and Bob. |
| NEON at ESA 2013 |
NEON will be at the Ecological Society of America's Annual Meeting in Minneapolis, MN. Look for us at the:
- NEON booth in the exhibition hall (booth 508)
- NEON Mixer (Tuesday, August 6, 6:30 - 8:00 PM, Hilton Minneapolis, Minneapolis Grand Ballroom, Section C)
- Organized Oral Session 3 (Monday, August 5, 1:30 - 5:00 pm, 101C, Minneapolis Convention Center)
- Organized Poster Session 2 (Tuesday, August 6, 4:30 - 6:30 PM)
- ...and many other sessions
For details, see the full listing on the NEON website. |
| Paper on NEON Methodology for Sensor Data Quality Control |
NEON staff Jeff Taylor and Hank Loescher recently published a paper "Automated quality control methods for sensor data: a novel observatory approach" in the open access journal Biogeosciences (doi:10.5194/bg-10-4957-2013).
Taylor and Loescher describe the novel data quality control plan for NEON's automated sensor measurements. The approach "focuses on automated methods for defining a suite of plausibility test parameter thresholds. Specifically, these plausibility tests scrutinize the data range and variance of each measurement type by employing a suite of binary checks. The statistical basis for each of these tests is developed, and the methods for calculating test parameter thresholds are explored here". The authors describe the implementation of this approach with preliminary data from a NEON prototype site. These tests will optimize our operations from current methodologies, and have the potential of being adopted elsewhere.
This paper, and another titled "NEON terrestrial field observations: designing continental-scale, standardized sampling", are also accessible on the right-hand information bar titled "NEON in the Media". |
| NEON and ICOS Sign Interoperability and Collaboration Agreement |
NEON and the Integrated Carbon Observing System (ICOS) Ecosystem Thematic Center (ETC) signed a memorandum of understanding in mid-June 2013. This MOU is a written agreement to formally foster collaboration and interoperability between ICOS and NEON.
Interoperability activities include linking joint science questions to requirements, traceability of measurements to known standards or best community practices, uncertainties in respective data products, and broadly defined informatics.
Collaboration objectives include establishing opportunities for visiting scientists, program-level project support, education and outreach activities, and continuing joint participation in a variety of science workshops and symposia.
As part of the MOU, NEON and ICOS have begun a joint project of the Seventh Framework Program for Research and Innovation of the EU and the National Science Foundation. The Cooperation between Europe and US (COOPEUS) project aims to build the framework for the harmonization of data products across observatories in a manner that corresponds to the ICOS-NEON interoperability framework outlined above. We are currently accepting applications for a Staff Scientist (3 year term) to engage, broaden participation, and coordinate COOPEUS partnerships and planned activities. |
| ESA: Celebrating 30 years of Science Communication and Policy Engagement |
Thirty years ago, ESA opened its Public Affairs Office in Washington, DC to build capacity for ecologists to share ecology with policy, media and other communities.
ESA invites you to celebrate this occasion on Monday, August 5, 6:30 - 8 PM in Ballroom E, 3rd floor of the Minneapolis Hilton Hotel. Appetizers will be served, and a cash bar is available.
Come meet the wide array of members-graduate students, committee and section members, past presidents, the ESA Rapid Response Team and many others-who've participated in and shaped ESA's science communication and policy initiatives. |
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 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. - Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grants in the Directorate for Biological Sciences (DDIG)
- Excerpt: The National Science Foundation awards Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grants in selected areas of the biological sciences. These grants provide partial support of doctoral dissertation research for improvement beyond the already existing project. Allowed are costs for doctoral candidates to participate in scientific meetings, to conduct research in specialized facilities or field settings, and to expand an existing body of dissertation research.
- Critical Dates: 2013-10-10
- Instrument Development for Biological Research (IDBR)
- Excerpt: Advances in the biological sciences are increasingly dependent upon the development of novel instrumentation for collection of new data. The Instrument Development for Biological Research (IDBR) Program supports the development, production, and distribution of novel instrumentation that addresses demonstrated needs in biological research in areas supported by NSF Biology programs (see http://www.nsf.gov/bio).
- Critical Dates: 2013-07-31
- Collections in Support of Biological Research (CSBR)
- Excerpt: Biological research collections, including living stock/culture collections and non-living vouchered natural history collections, support many essential research activities in the Biological Sciences. Collections are used to document biodiversity, identify species, recognize climatic shifts, explore alternate energy sources, and improve agricultural, biomedical, and manufacturing applications. The Collections in Support of Biological Research (CSBR) Program provides funds: 1) for improvements to secure, improve, and organize collections that are significant to the NSF BIO-funded research community; 2) to secure collections-related data for sustained, accurate, and efficient accessibility of the collection to the biological research community; and 3) to transfer collection ownership responsibilities.
- Critical Dates: 2013-07-16
- EPSCoR Research Infrastructure Improvement Program Track-1: (RII Track-1)
- Excerpt: Research Infrastructure Improvement Track-1: (RII Track-1) awards provide up to $4 million per year for up to 5 years to support physical, human, and cyber infrastructure improvements in research areas selected by the jurisdiction's EPSCoR steering committee as having the best potential to improve future R&D competitiveness of the jurisdiction.
- Critical Dates: 2013-08-06
|
|
Key Dates in 2013
| Aug 4 - Aug 9: ESA Annual Meeting
Oct 1 - 2: NEON, Inc. Sixth NEON, Inc. Membership Meeting
Dec 9 - Dec 13: AGU Fall Meeting |
|
