Data Products

NEON is designed to enable continental scale analysis and forecasting in ecology and related disciplines. The observatory will provide physical infrastructure for data collection, but also information infrastructure that will be presented as NEON data products. This includes high-level data products and basic calibrated data products.

NEON has developed an initial catalog of high-level scientific data products that will provide synthesized information to ecologists, other scientists, educators, citizens, and decision makers. Currently, there are 100 high-level data products in the initial catalog that are grouped into six data suites: Bioclimate, biodiversity, biogeochemistry, ecohydrology, infectious disease, and land use change. This dynamic catalog will change as the state of ecological science advances.

NEON is also developing a catalog of basic calibrated data products that will be used primarily by specialists. The 539 entries in this catalog will be relatively stable throughout the lifetime of the observatory. The basic calibrated data are produced and organized by the NEON science sub-systems.

Click here for NEON Data Products Copyright statement.

Prototype Data Sharing

As part of NEON’s design and development activities, a number of data sets are being collected. These data are being collected to aid in designing protocols, to test protocols, assess the level of effort required for executing protocols, and to design infrastructure (e.g. cyberinfrastructure) to support sample and data collection in the field. These data sets have different levels of processing, QA/QC and independent verification than the long term data sets we anticipate from the facility.

NEON will make these data available to the community under its open data policy, but until the NEON information system is completed, distribution and documentation will be on an “as-is” basis. Prototype data sets, during 2011 through 2013, will be available to educational, technology and scientific users by request, and some data will be available online in a basic archive format.

Interested users may request access to these prototype data sets via NEON's Prototype Data Sharing system.

Every reasonable request for information and support will be addressed, however, these data are on an “as-is” basis and, depending on staff time availability, support may be limited. Please address all requests and problems to the Project Scientist.