![\"2015_NEONDomainOverview-web\"](\"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/2015_NEONDomainOverview-web-1024x732.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nDear Colleague,<\/p>\n
During the recent ESA Centennial Meeting in mid-August, ESA Past-presidents gathered in Baltimore to discuss NEON\u2019s (National Ecological Observatory Network<\/a>) future. Here are some thoughts we\u2019d like to share with you.<\/p>\n The ecological community strongly supports the goals and mission of NEON, despite the recent de-scoping, and looks forward to working with NEON to achieve its potential. A recent article<\/a> in Science<\/em> by Jeffrey Mervis highlights many of the problems that have plagued a program of unprecedented size and scale for the ecological community.<\/p>\n Nevertheless, we remain excited about the potential new science that could emerge from successful NEON. Years in the planning stage, NEON was conceived to generate consistent empirical data across broad scales of time and space that could reveal regional- and continental-scale contexts and forcing factors driving ecological change. The 30-year lifespan of NEON will benefit a generation of ecologists and generate new hypotheses while accurately documenting environmental change.<\/p>\n Other national and highly successful major-infrastructure projects such as the Hubbell<\/a> telescope also encountered major problems during deployment. Poor initial performance was solved and the telescope was improved in part through extensive engagement of the astronomy community. Analogously, it is essential to foster transparent communication among the scientific community, National Science Foundation<\/a> (NSF), and NEON to ensure that the re-scoped NEON best meets the needs of environmental and ecological science in the U.S.<\/p>\n While any project of this scale faces construction, budget, and scheduling challenges, the recent decision by NSF and NEON for a significant reduction in infrastructure shocked many in the research community. We must now confront these challenges in a collaborative and transparent way that can renew much of NEON\u2019s mission despite scaling back relocatable sites, some core site capabilities, and eliminating the aquatic experiment.<\/p>\n The de-scoping decisions were made with some input from the scientific community, NEON\u2019s Science, Technology and Education Advisory Committee, and representatives of the NEON Board of Directors. While this is a good start toward better communication, much stronger engagement with the scientific community would be achieved by establishing a consortium for environmental biology similar to those of other scientific communities (e.g. astronomers, climate scientists, oceanographers, and seismologists) to coordinate the mission, use and products of large national infrastructures.<\/p>\n We believe successful NEON could generate valuable data to help address problems that currently challenge the very fabric of society and the biosphere that sustains it.\u00a0 NEON can compliment, but not replace, other forms of ecological research, and we are encouraged by NSF\u2019s commitment to support STREON, the aquatic experiment, as an investigator-led activity. We encourage NSF and NEON to re-engage with the ecological community to assure that NEON will yield the scientific results it was designed to address.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Jill S. Baron, ESA President 2013<\/p>\n Monica G. Turner, ESA President 2015<\/p>\n David Inouye, ESA President 2014<\/p>\n Jill S. Baron, ESA President 2013<\/p>\n Scott Collins, ESA President 2012<\/p>\n F. Terry Chapin, ESA President 2010<\/p>\n Mary Power, ESA President 2009<\/p>\n Alison Power, ESA President 2008<\/p>\n Norm Christensen, ESA President 2007<\/p>\n Alan Covich, ESA President 2006<\/p>\n Nancy Grimm, ESA President 2005<\/p>\n Ann Bartuska, ESA President 2002<\/p>\n Diana H. Wall, ESA President 1999<\/p>\n Jerry H. Franklin, ESA President 1993<\/p>\n H. Ron Pulliam, ESA President 1991<\/p>\n Jean Langenheim, ESA President 1986<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A\u00a0guest commentary\u00a0from 16 current and past presidents of ESA addressing a recent move by the National Science Foundation to shrink\u00a0the mission scope of the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON). Dear Colleague, During the recent ESA Centennial Meeting in mid-August, ESA Past-presidents gathered in Baltimore to discuss NEON\u2019s (National Ecological Observatory Network) future. Here are some thoughts we\u2019d like to share…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":11209,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[85],"tags":[1757,743,67],"class_list":["post-11208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-guest-posts","tag-big-data","tag-neon","tag-nsf"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11208"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11208\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}