US Launches Eco Monitoring Network

Have you ever wondered what the 20 core eco-regions are in the U.S.? Well wonder no longer. Ten years in the making, the U.S. has just launched a national eco-system monitoring project to collect data on ecosystem issues and health. Read more at Nature News.

The National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) will consist of 20 'core' observatories representing distinct eco-regions throughout the United States (see map). These will be bolstered by temporary stations that can be relocated wherever data need to be collected. The sites will house equipment and host visiting researchers, while gathering a range of environmental data over at least three decades.

The result will be a vast database that scientists can mine to tackle broad questions such as how global warming, pollution and land-use change are affecting ecosystems across the country. "NEON is really about trying to understand the biology of the entire continent rather than the biology of a specific place," says David Schimel, the project's chief science officer, based in Boulder, Colorado.