NSF Announces Plan to Develop and Support NEON User Community

In a December 26, 2019 Dear Colleague Letter, the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Directorate for Biological Sciences (BIO) outlined how it would promote the continued development of individuals and investigator teams conducting research using the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON). The letter encourages “engagement and integration of biological and environmental science communities, and to grow convergent research across the foundation.” “Because many environmental controls, responses, and feedbacks operate over regional to continental scales, they cannot be investigated mechanistically by disconnected studies of individual ecosystems over short periods of observation,” reads the letter. “NEON is a major facility designed for studying the biosphere synoptically at regional to continental scales, with openly accessible methods and freely available, high precision data products.” In order to ensure that the impacts of NEON data and assignable assets are fully tapped, NSF plans to provide user community support for activities such as workshops or conferences, NEON Research Coordination Networks (RCN) awards, the Macrosystems Biology and NEON-Enabled Science (MSB-NES) Program, and proposals submitted through existing solicitations that support NEON enabled research. BIO also plans to support activities that “enable NEON-based research through fostering team science, user group coordination, and new NEON-fueled sc...
Source: Public Policy Reports - Category: Biology Authors: Source Type: news