Abbreviation NEON Purpose Ecological Monitoring Region served United States | Type Nonprofit organization Headquarters Boulder, Colorado Website www.neonscience.org | |
National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) is a large facility project operated by Battelle and funded by the National Science Foundation. When completed, NEON will be a continental-scale research platform for discovering and understanding the impacts of climate change, land-use change and invasive species on ecology. NEON will gather long-term data on ecological responses of the biosphere to changes in land use and climate, and on feedback with the geosphere, hydrosphere, and atmosphere.
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Battelle, an independent, nonprofit research and development organization, was selected by the National Science Foundation to complete the construction, commissioning and the initial operations of NEON.
The National Science Foundation, the National Science Board and Congress approved funding for NEON in 2011. Funding came from the National Science Foundation. NEON itself is not a funding agency.
NEON, Inc. was the entity in charge of running the NEON project when it first began, but on December 11, 2015, the NSF terminated the NEON, Inc. contract. The NSF conducted a search for a new company to complete the project through the first several months of 2016. In March 2016, Battelle was chosen to complete the construction of the NEON field sites and infrastructure needed to gather data from those sites.
Vision and Mission
The Vision for NEON is to guide global understanding and decisions in a changing environment with scientific information about continental-scale ecology through integrated observations, experiments and forecasts.
NEON's Mission is to design, implement and operate the first and foremost integrated continental‐scale scientific infrastructure to enable research, discovery and education about ecological change.
NEON will create a new national observatory network to collect ecological and climatic observations across the continental United States, including Alaska, Hawaii and Puerto Rico. The observatory will be the first of its kind designed to detect and enable forecasting of ecological change at continental scales over multiple decades. NEON has partitioned the United States into 20 eco-climatic domains, each of which represents different regions of vegetation, landforms, climate, and ecosystem performance. Data will be collected by field technicians and passive sensors at strategically selected sites within each domain and synthesized into information products that can be used to describe changes in the nation's ecosystem through space and time. NEON data products will be freely available via a web portal.
Science
The data NEON collects are defined by a series of Grand Challenges, as identified by the National Research Council at the request of the National Science Foundation. The National Research Council established a committee to evaluate the major ecological, environmental, and national concerns that require a continental-scale observatory, and it identified the following Environmental Grand Challenges:
Thus, the data and observations that NEON collects will focus on how land use, climate change and invasive species affect biodiversity, disease ecology, and ecosystem services. Obtaining integrated data on these relationships over a long-term period is crucial to improving forecast models and resource management for environmental change.
The National Science Foundation's vision for NEON is described as:
"A continental scale research instrument consisting of geographically distributed infrastructure, networked via state-of-the-art communications. Cutting-edge lab and field instrumentation, site-based experimental infrastructure, natural history archive facilities and/or computational, analytical and modeling capabilities, linked via a computational network will comprise NEON. NEON will transform ecological research by enabling studies on major environmental challenges at regional to continental scales. Scientists and engineers will use NEON to conduct real-time ecological studies spanning all levels of biological organization and temporal and geographical scales. NSF disciplinary and multi-disciplinary programs will support NEON research projects and educational activities. Data from standard measurements made using NEON will be publicly available.” (NSF 04549, 2004)
NEON is specifically designed to address central scientific questions about the interactions of ecosystems, climate, and land use:
Education
The data and information products that NEON collects and provides will be readily available to scientists, educators, students, decision makers and the public to use to understand and address ecological questions and issues. Data will be provided as meaningful information and learning tools that engage many audiences, including members of underserved communities, and promote broad ecological literacy.
Controversy and Firing of NEON, Inc. from the Project
Beginning in 2011, NEON, Inc., the entity in charge of initially running the NEON project, was audited by the Defense Contract Audit Agency on behalf of the National Science Foundation Office of the Inspector General. Auditor-in-Charge J. Kirk McGill determined that NEON, Inc. had poor control over taxpayer funds and could easily go over budget with little or no warning. He also found that NEON had spent taxpayer funds on illegal expenditures including alcohol, lobbying, parties, and luxury travel. When McGill's findings were not addressed by senior DCAA management, he disclosed the matter directly to Congress.
On December 3, 2014 a hearing on the matter was held before the United States House Committee on Science, Space and Technology. A second hearing was held on February 3, 2015. In April 2015 the Office of Management and Budget ordered all departments and agencies not to use "management fees" to pay for illegal expenditures. On September 18, 2015, a third hearing was held. The Committee ultimately substantiated McGill's allegations towards NEON, Inc. and on December 11, 2015, NEON, Inc. was fired from the project. This represents one of the largest Federal agreement terminations for cause in history. The NSF chose the Battelle in March 2016 to complete the construction of the Observatory in place of NEON, Inc.