NEON Program

Welcome to our first cohort of RaMP interns at Domain 08! 🎉 This year marks the beginning of a new partnership with the University of Alabama and the Jones Center at Ichauway as we participate in the Woods to Water post-baccalaureate program. RaMP interns are spending time with NEON D08 to gain field work experience, receive mentorship to build confidence in their skills, and begin independent research projects potentially using NEON data. For the past several weeks, interns Dustin Benton, Jamie Sarmiento, Mahlana Graham, and Khalil Williams (pictured left to right) have been diving in to terrestrial, aquatic, and instrumentation work. It has been a joy to have them join our team this summer! To learn more about the RaMP program, visit https://buff.ly/4bt8VSe

Attending the @ESA2024 Meeting? Join Eric Sokol of NEON for a Sunday workshop on exploring and working with continental-scale biodiversity data! Instruction will include an overview of the breadth of NEON, LTER, and EDI organismal datasets before an introduction to data discovery and visualization tools available in the ecocomDP package. Learn more and register: https://buff.ly/3xO8dBk See you there!

Apply to join the second cohort of the NEON Ambassador Program! This program is a great opportunity for early-career scientists who are interested in incorporating NEON into their work. Participants will have the chance to expand their network, deepen their understanding of NEON, and develop their leadership skills. If you know someone who might be interested or would be an excellent candidate, we encourage you to share this opportunity with them. For more details and to find the application form, please visit the Ambassador webpage, linked here. Applications will be accepted until July 15. Don't miss out!

NEON seeks an Engagement Coordinator! The Engagement Coordinator will be part of the NEON Engagement team that is responsible for communications and outreach planning and implementation, in collaboration with NEON headquarters and field staff at Domain offices. In particular, this position is responsible for coordinating NEON’s Outreach Liaison Program, supporting a team of 18 field ecologists in identifying, planning, and executing external engagement activities across the country. Apply today! https://buff.ly/3VZXDjS

We are excited to announce that applications are now open for the second cohort of the NEON Ambassador Program! This program is a great opportunity for early-career scientists who are interested in incorporating NEON into their work. Participants will have the chance to expand their network, deepen their understanding of NEON, and develop their leadership skills. If you know someone who might be interested or would be an excellent candidate, we encourage you to share this opportunity with them. For more details and to find the application form, please visit the Ambassador webpage, linked here. Applications will be accepted until July 15. Don't miss out!

Mice and other small mammals are important indicator species with a sensitivity to local environmental changes and an ability to carry and transmit zoonotic diseases. With such widespread populations all over the country, mice are a small mammal NEON focuses on for data collection in order to monitor biodiversity and ecological change over time. One way to keep track of mice we observe in our plots is by ear tagging, a relatively easy and fast way of identifying individuals. At one site, we work closely with the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute (SCBI) in Front Royal, Virginia. They are working on camera-trapping weasels for their own data collection and happened to spot some of our mice friends, rocking their ear tags! They kindly sent us their photos so we can share them with all of you! 📸 credit: Brigit Rooney and Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute

For our latest Women in Ecology interview, we spoke with Laura Steger, Environmental and Zoological Collections Manager for the NEON Biorepository at Arizona State University. Steger spent her childhood in nature, influencing her to continue in that environment and work with NEON, spending her time surrounded by different specimens and samples from many different ecosystems. Learn more in our latest blog!

It’s that time of the year: the NEON Airborne Observation Platform (AOP) is conducting its remote sensing season to collect ecology data from the air across the country! Each year between March and October, the aircraft perform survey flights over a subset of the NEON field sites. In our latest blog, check out some fun facts about the AOP, see stunning photos taken by the AOP teams during previous surveys, and learn if the AOP is coming to a location near you! Read it here: https://buff.ly/4c11Ol2

Nominate a NEON Public Science Seminar Speaker! Beginning each fall, NEON holds a public Science Seminar series. The goals of the series are to highlight new findings and frontiers of ecology and NEON science, build a diverse and inclusive researcher community, showcase and catalyze partnerships, and amplify resources and tools that enable cross-scale ecological research. We are seeking speakers for the 2024-2025 series - nominate yourself or a colleague to give a talk! Talks are held on the second Tuesday of the month from 12-1pm Mountain Time. Please fill out this linked form to nominate a speaker: https://buff.ly/3LMw0Gn .

Interested in working in the beautiful desert while contributing to long-term, open-access ecological research? NEON is #hiring at Domain 14 based in Tucson, Arizona! See the links below for job postings. Lead Field Technician - Mammalogy: https://buff.ly/3xcYd4d Field Ecologist II - Limnology: https://buff.ly/4bQIyqE Senior Field Ecologist - Mammalogy: https://buff.ly/4bHlkDh