Measuring the Climate of Soils for the Next 30 Years

The National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON; www.neoninc.org) is a new NSF-funded major research facility that is currently under construction and will allow researchers to study the impacts of climate change, land use change and invasive species on US ecosystems. Here we present an overview of the sensor-based soils data that will be collected across the US for the next 30 years as part of NEON. Soil data will be collected continuously at 60 terrestrial NEON sites throughout the US, which include examples of most major US ecosystems and soil types, as well as many major land use types (e.g. wildland, urban, agricultural, and forestry). Measurements will include soil temperature and moisture profiles up to 3 m deep, soil respiration rates, fine root production and turnover, and energy fluxes into and out of the soil. Co-located with these soil data at each site are a wide range of measurements (500+) encompassing climatological, ecohydrological, biodiversity, and remote sensing data. All data will be made freely available in near-real time at several different spatial scales, including point measurements and maps at the local- (~1 ha), regional- (hundreds of km2), and continental-scale (millions of km2). The Observatory will be fully operational by 2017, however, the deployment of soil sensors will begin in 2014 at a limited number of sites.