Conference: NEON Great Lakes User Group Workshop

University Of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Milwaukee WI

Investigators

Abstract

The National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) was developed to understand biological phenomena at regional to continental scales. The Macrosystems Biology & NEON-Enabled Science program places a high priorty on scaling and integrating the results from observations at one scale to understand processes and dynamics better at other scales. The Great Lakes User Group (GLUG) is a domain-specific ensemble of researchers with a wide range of expertise, whose goal is to address scientific and technical issues specific to the Great Lakes region. This award provides support for a GLUG workshop to engage as many stakeholders as possible in identifying what ecological research and data collection is ongoing within the Great Lakes Domain and how this knowledge and expertise can be leveraged to advance scientific knowledge and address environmental challenges at regional to continental scales. The benefits to society include the application of this expertise to conservation and restoration in the Great Lakes and beyond. Promotion of learning and societal understanding of science will be achieved by the inclusion of members of underrepresented groups in science, including graduate students. GLUG will facilitate regionally focused, nationally relevant collaborative research, and create a mechanism for communication among regional stakeholders and NEON scientific staff. A workshop-based approach, consisting of short presentations, a keynote address, breakout brainstorming sessions and site visits will be adopted to create a network of researchers, facilitate exchange of research knowledge, integrate data from a range of ecologically focused disciplines, establish a framework to facilitate other user groups to organize and develop a roadmap for a collaborative project proposal. The outcome of these activities will strengthen existing collaborations and foster new ones, together with raising greater awareness and promoting use of NEON observations. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.