Memo of invitation for participation in NEON Domain 7 (Sent by e-mail 6
September 2005)

Hello,
As you may know, the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) planning process is moving along rapidly. At the recent ESA meeting the NEON organizers presented a status report on NEON planning that included a partitioning of the country into domains that will house NEON nodes (sites for instrument deployment) (see http://www.neoninc.org). The NEON domain maps with and without state boundaries are included in the pdf file
http://www.neoninc.org/documents/neon_map/NEONDomainsSlide_v1.3.pdf.

Earlier, a group of regions self-organized to contribute to the NEON planning process and representatives of each region formed a consortium group known as COREO (Consortium of Regional Ecological Observatories, http://coreoneon.org/). As part of that process, Jake Weltzin (University of Tennessee, email: jweltzin@utk.edu) and Pat Mulholland (Oak Ridge National Laboratory, email: mulhollandpj@ornl.gov) have served as representatives of a region known as SAPOZEO (loosely comprising the region from the Southern Appalachians to the Ozarks). We established a website (http://web.utk.edu/~jweltzin/SAPOZEO/) to serve as a information and communication tool. With the new NEON domain structure, SAPOZEO is dividing into 2 regions to match NEON domains 7 (Appalachians/Cumberland Plateaus; also known, for the time being as
SAPOZEOEast) and 8 (Ozark complex; also know temporarily as SAPOZEOWest).

As you will see from the various maps, NEON domain 7 includes most of the eastern portion of SAPOZEO, but also includes southern Indiana and Ohio, which formerly were not considered part of SAPOZEO. In reorganizing SAPOZEO along the lines of NEON domain 7, Jake and I would like to identify interested people from these areas to include in a new regional group (Southern Appalachians/Cumberland Plateaus). At some point NSF and the NEON planning committee will issue some sort of a call to identify the instrument deployment nodes within each domain, and the ultimate purpose of our regional group is to ensure that domain 7 is represented in this process. We have had two meetings of the SAPOZEO group (see website for summaries), but plan to wait until sometime in late 2005 or early 2006 to organize a meeting of the new domain 7 group.
We should know more about criteria and constraints for establishing instrument deployment nodes when NEON Inc issues their draft plan about Oct 1. There will also be a COREO meeting in mid November that Pat and Jake are planning on attending as representatives from domain 7 and we should learn more at that time as well.

If you would like to be part of the domain 7 group, please send Pat Mulholland a note to add you to his distribution list. Also, please go on the SAPOZEO website under the heading "SAPOZEO efforts" and register yourself as an individual member of SAPOZEO. Also please register information on any field stations or long-term research sites that you are involved with in our region through the COREO website
(http://coreoneon.org/neonfolder1.2005-01-26.7419808423/Geo2_view). Finally, if you know of anyone else in the domain 7 areas of southern Indiana, southern Ohio or western West Virginia who is involved with field stations or long term field research, please pass this invitation on to them.

Thanks,
Pat Mulholland and Jake Weltzin