Memo from Pat Mulholland and Jake Weltzin regarding the status of NEON Regions:
A report from the NEON workshop at the August 2005 meeting of the Ecological Society of America, Montreal
SAPOZEO members,
The National NEON Planning group (NEON Inc) rolled out a partial draft plan
for NEON at the ESA meeting in Montreal in early August. Perhaps some
of you attended
the session. Several things seem to be emerging. It looks like the US will
be divided into 20 domains (formerly called regions) based primarily
on climate
and physical features and that there will be 4 nodes, including wildland,
managed, and urban areas, perhaps to be co-equal, plus a mobile node.
Each of these nodes
will consist of a variety of types of instrumentation to monitor physical,
chemical, and biological properties of terrestrial and aquatic environments.
Attached is
a map of the 20 proposed domains superimposed on state boundaries (and
a link to the map is http://www.neoninc.org/documents/neon_map/NEONDomainsSlide_v1.3.pdf).
As you will see, our SAPOZEO region is now split among primarily 2 domains.
Domain 7, called the Appalachians/Cumberland Plateaus includes the eastern
part of TN,
all but the most western part of KY, western NC, southwestern VA, western
WVa, and southern OH and IN. Domain 8, called the Ozark Complex, includes
much of
AL and MS, western TN, the western tip of KY, southern MO, AR, and northern
LA. Although there is intended to be some fuzziness to the actual boundaries
of these
domains (they may shift a little), it seems clear that SAPOZEO is no
longer considered one domain in the NEON planning process. Several other
previously-defined
regions
are in a similar situation.
The full draft plan for NEON is to be submitted to NSF and the scientific
community for comment on October 1; draft materials should soon be
available through the
NEON website (www.neoninc.org).
Please view the materials when they become available, and provide feedback
via the instructions provided at
neoninc.org.
Presumably
the details
concerning criteria for selecting nodes within each domain will be
included in that plan. For example, it is not clear how large an
area will be
used as the
measurement footprint for each node and whether the 3 fixed nodes
(wildland, managed, urban) must be located in fairly close proximity to
one another
within each domain. It is our understanding that NSF will solicit
proposals to establish
the sites for all nodes within each domain likely early in 2006.
However, this will probably be a very different kind of solicitation (highly
prescribed) with
many criteria that must be met for each node site. Exact placement
of nodes will depend on the response to this solicitation. The instrumentation
that
is installed
will be owned and maintained by NEON Inc and the data will be available
to everyone in real time (or nearly so).
It's not clear what if anything we should do as members of SAPOZEO
at this time. It probably makes sense to informally restructure
into 2 groups
that
largely
match domains 7 and 8. For example, it would seem that those from
AL, MS, AR, MO, and western TN and possibly western KY could form
a group
corresponding
to
domain 8. Is there anyone in these areas who wants to take the
lead in organizing such a group? This group might want to recruit additional
representation from areas in domain 8 not currently represented
in
SAPOZEO.
Those of us from eastern TN, KY, western NC and southwestern VA
could remain as a group roughly comprising domain 7. We would
probably need to recruit
additional people from southern OH and IN and possibly western
WVa.
However, until we see
more details for siting nodes within each domain and that hopefully
will be part of the draft plan released October 1, there may
not be much we
want to do at
this time.
Let us know if you have any comments (please copy the entire
distribution list).
Thanks,
Pat and Jake