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The University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point Treehaven facility has been proposed to join a national coalition of partners who are building a continental-scale ecological observation platform for understanding and forecasting the impacts of climate change, land-use change, and invasive species on ecology.
The facility, called the National Ecological Observatory Network, Inc. (NEON), has received $24.5 million in funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to launch the nationwide project, which includes $3.8 million to construct the NEON “cyber-infrastructure.”
Treehaven, a residential natural resources education and conference facility located near Rhinelander, and operated by UW-Stevens Point’s College of Natural Resources, has been chosen as a candidate host site for NEON’s relocatable instrument towers that will collect, receive and transmit data from a complex array of sensors located across the continental United States, including Alaska, Hawaii and Puerto Rico.
“We are pleased and proud our Treehaven facility has been proposed to participate in this prestigious national research project,” said Linda Bunnell, UWSP Chancellor. “This is another sign that northern Wisconsin is becoming a major player in environmental research, and we believe our university is well positioned to facilitate this trend that will help promote economic development in the region.”
According to Treehaven Director Corky McReynolds, being selected as a relocatable tower site is both an honor and an opportunity. “Projects funded by NSF are held in very high esteem and generally address research needs of national priority,” he said. “Our selection for this project is truly an honor, and it stems largely from Treehaven’s reputation as a well-managed woodland and from our involvement in hosting the annual Northwoods Research Summit the past two years.”
NEON relocatable sites are designed to be moved every three to five years to other locations within their ecoclimatic “domains.” The Great Lakes domain includes Michigan and large portions of Wisconsin and Minnesota. NEON monitoring sites in the Great Lakes, including Treehaven, fit into a national strategy for increasing our understanding of forest management practices on ecological processes. Additional relocatable sites in the Pacific Northwest and the Southeast have been identified to round out this strategy.
The NEON Great Lakes candidate core site will be based at the University of Notre Dame’s Environmental Research Center and the UW Trout Lake Station in northern Wisconsin. The NEON project is expected to start up within two years and McReynolds said a pilot project at Treehaven will begin this summer, part of a planning grant to meet NEON research goals.
As a result of its involvement with the relocatable towers, Treehaven will be a part of NEON’s research protocols for the life of the project. According to McReynolds, this will open many doors for UWSP faculty to apply for NSF funding. “It’s a huge opportunity for our faculty and students,” McReynolds added. McReynolds will serve on the committee that oversees the Great Lakes Domain research and educational priorities. He also noted Treehaven’s potential role as a meeting and conference location for NEON collaborators. In addition, each of NEON’s 20 domains across the continent will have an educator, and McReynolds hopes that Treehaven’s expertise in outreach education might qualify it to host that position for the Great Lakes domain.
The goal of the planned 30-year NEON project is to identify and understand the critical environmental drivers and ecological responses on a continent-wide scale. The network will support a range of long-term ecological research activities and enhance the capacity of scientists to forecast future states of ecological systems affected by the changing environment.
NEON is the first initiative in the biological sciences considered for funding through the NSF Major Research Equipment and Facilities Construction (MREFC) portfolio—a fund that has built telescope arrays, neutrino detectors, and ocean research vessels. NEON is designed to serve as a U.S. terrestrial contribution to the proposed Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS). More information about the project at http://www.neoninc.org
