 Our natural world is changing. More than ever before, understanding and forecasting the impacts of climate change, land use change and invasive species on our natural resources has become a practical necessity. To provide comprehensive data that furthers understanding of these impacts, NEON, the National Ecological Observatory Network, the first continental scale ecological observatory, is now underway. For the next three decades, NEON will capture a comprehensive range of standardized data throughout 20 ecoclimatic domains across a broad spatial scale from national satellite-based measurements down to observation of ground sites and individual organisms. Currently, there are no facilities regularly available that provide scientists with consistent continental scale ground resolution data on regional landscapes and vegetation. NEON will use innovative airborne mapping methods to close this gap, which will primarily measure vegetation chemistry and structure. The NEON Airborne Observation Platform, or AOP, when fully operational, will include an imaging spectrometer, a scanning waveform recording LiDAR, which stands for light detection and ranging, and a high-resolution digital camera. Three complete airborne systems are planned for installation into twin-autor aircraft. The AOP will use an airborne imaging spectrometer in order to study the vegetation growing in an area, which will provide a picture of how ecological systems are performing. The spectrometer images a wide swath on the ground to measure subtle variations in sunlight, reflecting off vegetation on Earth's surface. The spectrometer breaks this reflected light into narrow bands of the color spectrum, allowing scientists to create images that precisely identify the percentage of individual species of vegetation, both native and invasive, at each NEON site. The AOP will also use a waveform recording OPTEC LiDAR system to capture data that lets scientists determine key structural markers of ecosystem change. LiDAR sends out a laser pulse and then calculates the time difference between the outgoing and returning light to measure the relative distance to targets. The LiDAR scans back and forth to create a three-dimensional view of vegetation and topography surrounding NEON sites. LiDAR data will allow scientists to see changes in the surface of the Earth and the heights of structures, such as plant canopies, undergrowth, and ground topography. Together, these instruments will provide 3D imaging that will revolutionize the way we view changes in ecosystems, including consistent data on such critical elements as chemistry and structure of plant canopies and land cover percentages of types of vegetation. The airborne observation platform flight plans are designed to cover each of NEON's 62 core and relocatable sites each year. Flights are planned at or near peak greenness for each site to ensure consistency of the data. This will allow scientists to detect small trends in how vegetation is changing and ecosystems are functioning. Additional flights will be executed in regions where significant events, such as fires, oil spills, hurricanes, and other phenomena, can be an important catalyst for change. As with all NEON data, AOP data will be free and publicly available. Scientists will also be able to propose additional AOP flights to collect data for specific key research. The capability of the fully integrated NEON AOP will be well beyond existing systems in its ability to produce quantitative information about ecosystem response to climate change, land use change, and invasive species. These leading indicators captured at site-specific scale provide scientists a revolutionary new view of how individual organisms across hundreds of kilometers change over time. It is a critical contribution to game-changing science being conducted at NEON.