A federally protected forest in West Alabama eventually could help scientists document and predict the ecological effects of climate change across the continent.
If approved by Congress, the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) project will place 20 data collection centers at various spots throughout the United States, including one in the Oakmulgee District of the Talladega National Forest in Hale and Bibb counties, to measure changes in climate, land use, invasive species and infectious diseases.
Amy Ward, a University of Alabama professor of biological sciences and director of the university's Center for Freshwater Studies, is one of 140 scientists involved with NEON since the project's inception in 2004.
'We wanted a wildland site as much as possible,' Ward said of the 12,500 acres in Talladega Forest's Oakmulgee District. 'It's a forested area and it's managed [by the U.S. Forestry Service], but it's unimpacted by human activities.'
Implementation of the project, which will cover most of the continent, from Alaska to Puerto Rico, remains years away. Congress will not consider whether to fund NEON until after the National Science Foundation approves a final version of the project sometime in 2009, Ward said. The actual construction of the study sites are expected to take place between two and seven years after that.
'We don't know exactly where our site falls into that,' Ward said.
Sixteen of the sites are within the continental U.S., with two more in Alaska and one each in Hawaii and Puerto Rico.
'Each candidate site is designed to act as a detector in a national observatory, sensing a portion of the domain, much as a single detector in a digital camera detects information from a portion of the scene being photographed, while the whole megapixel array creates an image,' said David Schimel, CEO of NEON.
The plan calls for towers and ground sensors to record and document soil and water properties, air quality and weather conditions, among other things. They also will track patterns and changes in living creatures, including small mammals, insects, birds, fish and plants, Ward said. NEON will use aircraft to track and record changes at the site over time, including shifts in plant diversity.
The sites will be linked through an intricate network of computers that will record and archive data for at least 30 years, or enough time to monitor ecological trends. As much as possible, identical instruments and data collection methods will be used at each site to maintain uniformity, Ward said.
One site was selected from each of 20 geographical domains determined by NEON.
If approved and installed, the network will serve many functions.
'It can be used for a large number of things,' Ward said, 'including ... tracking the effects of climate change, eco-hydrology, forest management and more or less taking the pulse of environmental status and change.
'The goal of NEON, which is a very long-term project, is to provide better ecological forecasting.'
For information on the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) study project, visit http://neoninc.org.Tuscaloosa News
