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Executive summary of the IBRCS white paper. (AIBS News).

Article Excerpt
This white paper was developed by the Infrastructure for Biology at Regional to Continental Scales Working Group (IBRCS Working Group) as part of an American Institute of Biological Science's IBRCS project. The aim was to further advance the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) initiative by explaining the scientific rationale behind the need for NEON, how NEON will operate to meet that need, and the results that NEON is expected to produce. The IBRCS Working Group was aided by input from scientists and organizations presented orally and in writing at three town meetings convened by AIBS under the IBRCS project. As a result, this white paper represents the views of a broad segment of the scientific community.

NEON mission. In the past century we learned an enormous amount about individual species and about ecological processes at the scale of watersheds and landscapes, but there is much we do not understand. In this century we must further our understanding of ecological processes and learn how local processes can be scaled up to biomes or continents if we are to accurately predict changes in the composition, structure, and dynamics of the nation's ecosystems and understand how those changes are likely to affect us. To develop that understanding, a new type of scientific infrastructure is needed-an infrastructure that enables the simultaneous collection of compatible data on fundamental ecological and evolutionary processes over broad geographical and temporal scales. NEON is a National Science Foundation (NSF) research platform that will apply experimental, observational, analytical, communication, and information technologies to investigate the structure, dynamics, and evolution of ecosystems in the United State s, to measure the pace of biological change resulting from natural and human influences at local to continental scales, and to forecast...