PNNL

Abstract

The National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) provides 179 distinct data products from 81 sites (47 terrestrial and 34 freshwater aquatic sites) within the United States and Puerto Rico. These data products include both field and remote sensing data collected using standardized protocols and sampling schema, with centralized quality assurance and quality control (QA/QC) provided by NEON staff. There exist opportunities to increase the impact and reach of NEON data through the creation of higher-level data products derived by the user community. These derived data products are curated, documented, reproducibly-generated datasets created by applying various processing steps to one or more lower-level data products–including interpolation, extrapolation, integration, statistical analysis, modeling, or transformations. While derived data products are outside of the scope of NEON’s mission, they can help increase NEON’s impact through broadening the size and diversity of the user base, decreasing the time and effort needed for working with NEON data, and helping users address multidisciplinary questions.