Why should NEON build from the ground up when there is already a huge network of ecological monitoring activities available across the United States?
NEON is being built from the ground up rather than by combining existing capabilities for a number of reasons. Most environmental monitoring networks focus on either environmental drivers of change or on the responses to change. NEON is designed to monitor both drivers and responses and to provide data to understand the internal feedbacks and interactions in ecosystem behavior. When the NEON questions impose requirements for outside data, NEON will incorporate a variety of existing high-quality data sources. However, NEON is not designed as a clearinghouse for environmental data.
NEON responds to a different set of questions than other environmental monitoring networks. NEON is being built to last for at least 30 years while other networks have a wide variety of planned lifetimes. NEON is being built from the ground up – rather than using information from existing programs – for a number of reasons. First, NEON is a user facility designed to collect accurate, precise, and easily comparable data. While it may be possible to achieve high standards of accuracy and precision using some existing networks, the wide variety of measurement approaches and standards used by existing monitoring programs suggests that it will be more economical (especially when considering operational costs) to build a new network rather than retrofit existing networks. Second, most environmental monitoring networks focus on either environmental drivers of change (such as air pollution) or on the responses to change (such as the mountain pine beetle). NEON is designed to monitor both drive
Related Questions
- Why should NEON build from the ground up when there is already a huge network of ecological monitoring activities available across the United States?
- What is the difference between NEON and the Long Term Ecological Research Network (LTER)? Is NEON just an expansion of the LTER program?
- What is the Ecological Monitoring and Assessment Network (EMAN)?
