PS 2-21
The NEON Aquatic Network: Standardizing deployment of aquatic instrument systems across continental ccosystems
The National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) is a national-scale research platform for assessing the impacts of climate change, land-use change, and invasive species on ecosystem structure and function. NEON will collect data for 30 years to facilitate spatial-temporal analysis of environmental responses and rivers of ecosystem change, ranging from local through continental scales. Using standardized methods and designs, the data collected can be compared across a wide variety of ecosystems at multiple scales. Standardized quality assurance and quality control allow data to be processed efficiently and disseminated to users through an online data portal. Currently, the network is in construction phase. This poster will present the design of the aquatic instrumentation systems within the NEON network and discuss the challenges and opportunities for water monitoring across the observatory using NEON data.
Results/Conclusions
The aquatic instrument systems provide data to examine biogeochemical, biological, hydrologic, and geomorphic metrics at 36 sites, which are a combination of small 1st/2nd order wadeable streams, large rivers, and lakes. Sites are located within 19 of 20 eco-climatic domains identified by NEON using a multivariate geographic clustering method. A typical site hosts up to two in-stream sensor sets designed to collect near-continuous water quality data (pH, temperature, conductivity, DO, chlorophyll, turbidity, CDOM, NO3-) along with up to 8 shallow groundwater monitoring wells (level, temp., cond.), and a local meteorological station (2D wind speed, PAR, barometric pressure, temperature, net radiation). When coupled with aquatic observational data (water/sediment chemistry, aquatic organisms, and geomorphology), the aquatic network produces 200+ low-level data products for each site, available to users.