 Hi, my name is Marie Faust. I'm a science outreach specialist for the National Ecological Observatory Network. Today I'm going to be talking about tools for accessing and understanding NEON data in the undergraduate classroom. So first, what is the National Ecological Observatory Network otherwise known as NEON? The National Science Foundation's NEON project is a continental-scale ecological observation facility operated by Battelle. NEON provides free and open data on the drivers of and responses to ecological change, a standardized and reliable framework for research and experiments, and data interoperability for integration of other national and international network science projects. So why is NEON important? NEON provides a highly coordinated national system for monitoring a number of critical ecological and environmental properties and multiple spatial and temporal scales. This allows researchers to detect changes in how our ecosystems function over time. So how can NEON be used? NEON provides data that can be used to address research questions across temporal and spatial scales. NEON data sampling is designed to scale within a single field site and across field sites to enable researchers to ask questions from the individual to the continental scale. NEON is also designed to collect data for 30 years. The long-term operations of NEON will also allow researchers to answer questions on scales from seconds to decades. For example, using NEON data biodiversity can be studied at several different scales from the genetic diversity within and between individuals to ecosystem and process of diversity across large regional or continental scales. NEON data can also be used to enable environmental forecasting to better understand the key attributes and trajectories of fine-scale and regional scale ecological processes. Ecological forecasting using NEON data can be used to answer questions such as how will ecosystems change in the near future and how do human decisions affect these outcomes? So where and how does NEON collect data? NEON statistically partitioned the continental US, Hawaii and Puerto Rico into 20 eco-climatic domains that represent distinct regions of vegetation, landforms and ecosystem dynamics to capture the full range of US ecological and climatic diversity. NEON is designed to collect data for 30 years at 81 terrestrial and freshwater aquatic field sites distributed across the 20 domains throughout the United States. NEON data is a combination of three different collection systems, automated instruments, observational sampling in the field and airborne remote sensing. The diversity of data collection methods allows for comprehensive sampling at each site. The data collected through these three systems may be studied in conjunction with each other since they are collected in close proximity at each field site. This allows researchers to examine linkages across aquatic, terrestrial and atmospheric systems. The data are also comparable across ecosystems and field sites which means researchers can study connections and patterns and develop models to forecast environmental trends locally, regionally and even at the continental scale. Staff collect, verify and provide this data to users through the online NEON data portal. All data are free and available for anyone to download through this portal. Additionally information on programmatic access to NEON data and documents such as data product user guides and detailed protocols are available through the NEON data portal. The data and documents that are available on the portal may be used by the scientific research community, educators, students and others who want to explore the vast amounts of information that will be available during the lifetime of the observatory. So now we are going to transition and discuss the educational and training resources NEON can provide for two faculty. NEON provides a number of educational resources including data skills tutorials, teaching modules, science videos and science protocols. These resources pack a lot of information into just a few minutes and are a great way to get acquainted with the NEON program. Teaching modules are available as downloads for faculty to modify or to use in their classrooms. These teaching modules are designed to teach students a variety of ecological concepts and data science skills using real NEON data and are developed in collaboration with faculty. NEON teaching modules have been used to teach concepts from photosynthesis to ecosystem exchanges. One example of a teaching module that can be used in the undergraduate classroom is our module on data management using NEON's small mammal data and its accompanying lesson on mark recapture analysis. Undergraduate STEM students are graduating into professions that require them to manage and work with data at many points of a data management life cycle. Within ecology students are presented not only with many opportunities to collect data themselves but increasingly to access and use public data collected by others. This activity introduces the fundamentals of data management starting with field observations and moving all the way through data analysis and results while teaching students about the common fieldwork task of trapping and measuring small mammals. NEON also provides professional development to faculty. NEON provides professional development for faculty through the NEON data education fellows faculty mentoring networks. These networks are designed to support faculty interested in using NEON data in their classroom. To become a NEON data education fellow faculty participate in a five month long faculty mentoring network focused on creating or modifying and implementing teaching materials using NEON data with their students. Upon completion of the NEON data education faculty mentoring network faculty publish open educational resources using NEON data or protocols online. The materials are published on the quantitative undergraduate biology education and synthesis projects website that is known as CUBE's. All of the resources are freely available for other instructors to modify and implement with their students. Another resource NEON provides is our online data tutorials. Our self-paced online data tutorials are designed for you to use at standalone help on a single topic while our tutorial series may be used as an introduction to a new subject. Many faculty members integrate our data skills tutorials into their curricula as these exercises can be done independently online or easily adapted into guided activity. Our data skills tutorials cover a variety of topics including remote sensing, phenology, time series, macro systems ecology and much more. The code for all script based tutorials are is downloadable at the end of the tutorial and the original files can be found on github. NEON also provides science videos on our YouTube channel. Our science videos on YouTube offer a fun introduction to NEON scientific objectives concepts and operations. Our videos cover a variety of topics including NEON science concepts and techniques, NEON layout design data collection and data processing, an overview of NEON field sites and much more. NEON also provides documentation that supports all of our data collection systems including instrumented systems, observational sampling and airborne remote sensing in the document library on the NEON data portal website. The documentation NEON provides includes our general science strategy and site specific characterization documents along with the algorithm theoretical basis documents and sensor command control and configuration documents that together describe how our instrumented data products are collected, generated and then processed. And for observation systems key documents include data product user guides that provide summarized information on the sampling protocols and data structures underlying the observational data products, the foundation science dot design documents that provide background that explains why NEON collects particular observational data products in the first place and why they are collected in a particular way and the protocol contracted laboratories used to analyze NEON samples. But the documents I really want to talk about today are field sampling protocols as I think these can be extremely valuable teaching and research tools to increase the impact of NEON in your classroom. NEON has generated over 30 sampling protocols that encompasses the diversity of taxa and biogeochemical measurement sample summarized here for our aquatic systems including fish, macroinvertebrates and plants and summarized here for our terrestrial systems including small mammals mosquitoes and ground beetles. The NEON sampling protocols are the result of extensive research and collaboration of NEON scientists with other experts in the community, adopting standard methods whenever possible and finally field testing at a selection of NEON sites. At this point most of our protocols have been implemented at multiple sites across the country and with revisions only occurring annually to date to improve and clarify the protocol. All of our protocols are open so if you want to collect data locally you can use them as a starting off point. Here are two examples of projects that use NEON protocols. Stream Climes is a collaborative research project that involves nine professors across seven universities. The project investigates how drying affects stream ecosystems in different climates across the southern half of the United States. The work includes a significant field-based component that integrates NEON stream research sites and macroinvertebrate sampling protocols to document the biodiversity food web structure and genetic connectivity of stream and benthic invertebrate communities at perennial and intermittent stream sites. Second project is the Yellowstone Phenology Project. Citizen scientists working on the Yellowstone Phenology Project use NEON ground beetle sampling protocols to document beetle phenology in the park. NEON spans the North American continent and tracks ecological change from watersheds down to microbes. Our open access principles and diverse educational resources support students and researchers who seek to learn more about our changing world. Thank you for taking a moment to see how NEON can help you to bring the wide world of ecology into your research or classroom. If you're interested in learning how to access and use NEON data please click on the link on this slide. Thank you for being here today.