January 2021: What’s New With NEON?

This month, we highlight innovative research and collaborations National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) that continue to improve our knowledge of the natural world. These joint efforts include NEON’s participation in the American Geophysical Union’s Thriving Earth Exchange – a project focused on local research – and a new partnership between EREN and NEON to make remote research more accessible. NEON data will also contribute to forecasting efforts at the University of Arizona.

This Month’s Spotlight 
The latest news from NEON includes:

1. NEON is excited to partner with the American Geophysical Union’s Thriving Earth Exchange. The program connects 60,000 experts and advocates in Earth and space science to foster community partnerships and advance local priorities. NEON will be selecting Community Science Fellows to develop and lead science projects in their local communities.
   
   
2. Brian Enquist, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona, is harnessing the power of big data to predict the fate of global biodiversity in the wake of environmental change. Enquist and Nirav Merchant, the director of the University’s Data Science Institute, and a national network of other researchers were awarded a $2.5 million from the National Science Foundation, to continue their research using NEON data to predict which species may be the most at risk and what behaviors could help save them.
   
   
3. To ease the challenges of remote-learning environments, NEON and the Ecological Research as Education Network (EREN) are developing joint projects to support flexible learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. EREN is connecting their collaborative research model with NEON’s continental-scale datasets allowing students and faculty at multiple sites to collect data wherever they are. Four EREN-NEON Flexible Learning Projects have been developed so far, with more becoming available in the future.

Sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and operated by Battelle, NEON is a continental-scale ecological observatory network dedicated to providing high-quality, consistently generated, standardized data that is free and available to all users. By enabling scientists, researchers, and students to address critical questions and understand ecosystem changes over time, the NEON program allows the ecological community to tackle questions and problems at a scale that was not possible before.  

You can read about the latest work and research in the NEON Spotlight every month at Inside Battelle, and on our social media channels. For more information about NEON, visit NEONscience.org.