Journal of Ecology and Environment

The Ecological Society of Korea (한국생태학회)
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Lessons from constructing and operating the national ecological observatory network

  • Christopher McKay (National Ecological Observatory Network, Battelle Memorial Institute)
  • Received : 2023.10.23
  • Accepted : 2023.11.13
  • Published : 2023.12.31
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Abstract

The United States (US) National Science Foundation's (NSF's) National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) is a continental-scale observation facility, constructed and operated by Battelle, that collects long-term ecological data to better understand and forecast how US ecosystems are changing. All data and samples are collected using standardized methods at 81 field sites across the US and are freely and openly available through the NEON data portal, application programming interface (API), and the NEON Biorepository. NSF led a decade-long design process with the research community, including numerous workshops to inform the key features of NEON, culminating in a formal final design review with an expert panel in 2009. The NEON construction phase began in 2012 and was completed in May 2019, when the observatory began the full operations phase. Full operations are defined as all 81 NEON sites completely built and fully operational, with data being collected using instrumented and observational methods. The intent of the NSF is for NEON operations to continue over a 30-year period. Each challenge encountered, problem solved, and risk realized on NEON offers up lessons learned for constructing and operating distributed ecological data collection infrastructure and data networks. NEON's construction phase included offices, labs, towers, aquatic instrumentation, terrestrial sampling plots, permits, development and testing of the instrumentation and associated cyberinfrastructure, and the development of community-supported collection plans. Although colocation of some sites with existing research sites and use of mostly "off the shelf" instrumentation was part of the design, successful completion of the construction phase required the development of new technologies and software for collecting and processing the hundreds of samples and 5.6 billion data records a day produced across NEON. Continued operation of NEON involves reexamining the decisions made in the past and using the input of the scientific community to evolve, upgrade, and improve data collection and resiliency at the field sites. Successes to date include improvements in flexibility and resilience for aquatic infrastructure designs, improved engagement with the scientific community that uses NEON data, and enhanced methods to deal with obsolescence of the instrumentation and infrastructure across the observatory.

Keywords

Acknowledgement

The National Ecological Observatory Network is a program sponsored and fully funded by the US National Science Foundation and operated under cooperative agreement by Battelle. This material is based in part upon work supported by the US National Science Foundation through the NEON program. The content of this manuscript is based on a presentation at the 10th International Congress of East-Asia Federation of Ecological Societies (EAFES) that was held in Jeju, Korea in July 2023. The author wishes to thank the Korean National Institute of Ecology (NIE) for the invitation to present at the EAFES congress.

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