National Ecological Observatory Network
August 2026
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Hello NEON Community,
NEON strives to be an active partner in advancing research and innovation, and our team is available to support the development of research proposals, from providing letters of support to, when possible, serving as collaborators, coPIs, or key personnel, as part of the suite of NEON Research Support Services we offer. We encourage you to contact us if you are interested in pursuing a submission to these NSF solicitations, or any other relevant funding opportunities.
- Unlocking Dataset Value for AI-Enabled Scientific Discovery (NSF 26-512): The solicitation supports projects that enhance existing scientific datasets for AI-driven research and encourages integration of multiple datasets, interdisciplinary research, and investigations that go beyond the original purpose for which the data were collected. The solicitation closes November 4, 2026.
- Postdoctoral Research Fellowships in Biology (NSF 26-504): Intersection of Artificial Intelligence and Biological Sciences to Strengthen and Safeguard Biotechnology Innovations: The solicitation supports proposals that leverage national biological infrastructure to accelerate discovery and innovation. The PI of the NEON Biorepository, Dr. Hojun Song, is offering to serve as a sponsoring scientist with Arizona State University as the host institution and encourages interested parties to contact him through the NEON Biorepository Contact Us form. NEON also offers expertise in FAIR4AI principles and partners with the Sage Grande Testbed to provide access to edge computing nodes at NEON sites, extending the possibilities for researchers interested in this solicitation. The 2026 deadline is fast approaching on September 29, though researchers can look ahead to the September 28, 2027, deadline.
NEON provides field coordination, and scientific expertise, national-scale research infrastructure, and a collaborative network to strengthen proposal competitiveness and drive your ideas forward.
In an exciting effort by the Global Ecosystem Research Infrastructure (GERI), there are now globally-harmonized drought index datasets openly accessible for use. The harmonized drought dataset work was supported by NSF Award 2301655, led by principal investigator (PI) Dr. Mike SanClements (Battelle) and co-PIs Dr. Hank Loescher (Battelle), Dr. Benjamin Ruddell (Northern Arizona University), and Dr. Christine Laney (Battelle). The datasets focus on variables measured consistently across GERI, including soil temperature, soil moisture, soil texture, air temperature, and precipitation. These datasets are available through the GERI DataONE portal: https://geri.dataone.org/.
Within our own portals, the NEON Biorepository sample portal now offers a variety of sample-associated imagery. The imagery includes scans of canopy foliage used to calculate leaf mass per area, photographs of the fish sampled for DNA barcoding, and reference images generated during taxonomic identification of aquatic samples. Read more and find links to the available imagery in the Data Notification.
Last month, Alyson East, a PhD candidate in Quantitative Ecology at the University of Maine, presented the talk "A Use Case of AI-Enabled Macroecology: Unlocking ecological insights from natural history collections for continental-scale trait-based research" at the Ecological Society of America (ESA) 2026 Annual Meeting. We are pleased to recognize her as the recipient of the 2026 Best NEON Presentation Award! This award recognizes an outstanding oral presentation at ESA 2026 that featured research incorporating NEON data, samples, specimens, or NEON Research Support Services. Alyson gave an impactful talk detailing her work on identifying trait variation through AI-enabled imaging processes using the carabid beetle collections at the NEON Biorepository. Read more about her work below.
If you are interested in hearing from others in the community about current research, projects, and innovations related to NEON, be sure to register for NEON Science Seminars. The 2026-2027 seminar series schedule has been released and features an excellent lineup of presentations on such topics as litter decomposition, ecological synchrony, AI for biodiversity, and organismal biology. Learn more and register on the Science Seminar web page.
All the best,
Kate Thibault, Acting Chief Scientist and Observatory Director
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Alyson East, Best NEON Presentation Award Recipient
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Biological collections hold vast amounts of information about how organisms vary across space, time and environment, but the limitations in extracting that information can hamper its use and application. Alyson East, PhD candidate at University of Maine, used AI-enabled workflows and image-analysis models to extract trait-based information from images and reveal patterns in beetle body size across the carabid beetle collections at the NEON Biorepository. Her research provides an approach to extract standardized trait data from biological collections that can be used to test long-standing ecological theories at a continental-scale.
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NEON Data in Action
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| MEOW-ML: A multimodal, multi-path framework for Earth Observation demonstrated through canopy height change prediction |
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| A primer on forest structure measurement with lidar for ecologists |
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Upcoming Events & Opportunities
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Science Seminar: Spectral Landscape Ecology as a Tool for Inferring the Spatial Organization of Intraspecific Variation: Insights from NEON Imaging Spectroscopy
Virtual |
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AmeriFlux Annual Meeting
Hybrid |
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TDWG Annual Conference
Hybrid |
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2026 NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowships in Biology (PRFB) Deadline
Virtual |
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NEON in the News
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| Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network (TERN), August, 2026 |
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| A FAIR go: helping to build globally-harmonised drought datasets |
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| The Dominion Post, August 24, 2026 |
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| WVU AI research could transform how scientists monitor ecosystems |
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Featured NEON Resources
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| Introduction to NEON Fish Capture Data |
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| Estimating Bird Occupancy and Detection Using NEON Observational Data |
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| NEON Biorepository: Understanding NEON Sample Types |
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Stay in the Loop
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| Track weekly Observatory status updates |
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| How are you using NEON in your research? |
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Access the Global Ecosystem Research Infrastructure drought datasets.
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LEARN MORE → |
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Search for samples on the NEON Biorepository Sample Portal.
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EXPLORE → |
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Receive the latest data and sample updates.
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SUBSCRIBE → |
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Read highlights of research in the NEON Community.
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READ BLOGS → |
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| Were you forwarded this newsletter? |
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To stay up to date with all things NEON,
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Boulder, CO 80301 |
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