 Hello everyone and thank you for taking time out of your day for joining us on this webinar on the National Ecological Observatory Network's mobile deployment platform. We'll begin. I want to say that NEON welcomes contributions from everyone who shares our values of unity, creativity, collaboration, excellence, and appreciation. This is outlined in our Code of Conduct and these guidelines apply to NEON staff as well as anyone participating in a NEON program. Our Code of Conduct can be found on our website and we'll also provide a link to that in chat. I want to also mention that we are recording this webinar and we'll post the recording on the NEON website. We'll also provide a PDF of the presentation and we'll post this on the NEON website as well. We have disabled chat for the participants but we will use the chat for displaying any web links. If you have any questions or comments please use the Q&A. There are two of us on the panel today myself and Mike's and Clements and we'll each do a quick introduction. My name is Ramelza Loeta and I've been on the NEON program for 10 years. I joined in 2013 during the construction phase and was part of the terrestrial instrumented systems team which focus on sensors and sensor subsystems that are not part of every NEON site. Special aspect of my position at that time was interfacing with the construction team and ensuring that all sites were built with minimal impact to the science. I've had the privilege to work on all aspects of NEON and in the fall of 2018 I took the lead in the NEON Assignable Assets program to have been leading the program ever since. I'd like to do an introduction for Mike so Mike would you like to introduce yourself? Sure hello everyone I'm Mike Sanclements. I've been with the NEON program since 2012 so for 11 years now prior to that I was a postdoc at the University of Colorado Boulder here. Since 2012 I led the terrestrial instrument science team which Ramelza was part of through the construction phase commissioning and transition to operations and the initial operations of that team and I am now the director or lead of research initiatives for the NEON program and I will turn it back over to Ramel and looking forward to filling you in on the MDP. Thank you Mike and with introductions out of the way let's go ahead and begin. For this personal presentation I'd like to provide a quick summary of the NEON Assignable Assets program for those not familiar with it by the quick overview of the MDP over the mobile deployment platform who over a few use case scenarios for MDP deployments show three actual MDP deployments that we did how to request an MDP in the process summarize everything with a short MDP video and finally have some time for questions and discussion. Starting with an overview of the NEON Assignable Assets program there's a link to the website and the program FAQ in the chat the NEON Assignable Assets program makes available certain components of NEON's infrastructure scientists engineers and field ecologists and technicians to members of the community to support their own research or other activities. The signable assets program has several guiding principles it's designed to leverage NEON infrastructure for community engagement projects in the program are evaluated to avoid conflicts with NEON's mission and scope as well as avoiding interference with current NEON measurements or sampling. Project support is on a cost-recoverable basis I want to note that this is the funding model from the NSF for NEON other NSF research infrastructure have different funding models we have a process for evaluating requests that includes a feasibility and technical review if there are cost analyses and pricing of the project and if funded or a project is ready to be implemented establishing a contract or work agreement. The signable assets program is categorized as eight services that we provide and support starting on the left side we have the observational sampling infrastructure the sensor infrastructure our airborne observation platform and our mobile deployment platform on the right side we have access samples request field site coordination subject matter expertise and letter of support or collaboration. I'm not going to go over each of these now I today will be focusing on the mobile deployment platform or the MDP however for those that are interested to know more about the NEON Assignable Assets Program and what it has to offer we do have another webinar next month on September 13th where we'll go over the program in more detail a link to the webinar registration and zoom link should also be posted in the chat it'll also be linked on the NEON upcoming events website in the next few slides I'll provide a quick overview of the MDP infrastructure there's a link in the MDP specific website in the chat as well we like to view the MDP as a way for the science community to bring NEON to their research or research sites a tool for the community to innovate and impart creativity into NEON or bring NEON to a community members creative research MDPs are essentially mobile NEON tower sites with a subset of terrestrial and aquatic sensors that can be deployed from remote locations to collect NEON like data and NEON has five MDPs that are ready to deploy the standard MDP consists of a trailer mounted instrument hut that is identical to the instrument hut at the NEON terrestrial sites a roan 25g tower requestable up to 100 feet it has the ability to tie into utility power or be powered by a remote generator system has the ability for remote communications via cellular satellite or point-to-point internet connection it has a configurable array of atmospheric terrestrial and aquatic sensors and has the ability to incorporate additional research instrumentation this is important as a user is not limited to what sensors can be co-deployed along with NEON standard sensor set the MDP measurements and sensors are a subset of the full neon terrestrial and aquatic sensors and subsystems the list on the right is also on our website and the link will be provided in chat the terrestrial measurements include adico variants turbulent storage exchange co2 and water isotopes bare metric pressure precipitation profile measurements of temperature humidity wind and radiation as well as soil temperature moisture key flux and soil c2 fluxes aquatic measurements include nitrate temperature connectivity pH dissolve oxygen fdom chlorophyll PAR as well as the ability for periodic graph samples using an isco sampler a follow-up the overview with a few hypothetical MDP use case scenarios in a blog post who posted in 2021 we presented five use cases for MDPs you can read these in more detail on the neon website and linked in the chat these five use cases are one bring neon measurements to experimental sites to monitor response to disturbances and rapidly changing ecosystems three link networks by bringing neon measurements to other network sites or validate and test new instrument technologies and five capture spatial gaps or site heterogeneity through the blog post listed five use case scenarios we've since had more scenarios that researchers have approached us with including using an MDP as an educational resource where one could be deployed to a community user site or brought to the university to learn about sensors measurements or even sensor maintenance and repair another scenario was using MDP as a rapid response base station where the MDP could be deployed to provide standardized measurements while also providing rapid access to communications and power infrastructure for other systems and sensors there are many more scenarios for MDPs and we are excited to see what the community can dream up for them we would be delighted to hear how an MDP could enhance your research in the next few slides I'd like to present three actual MDP deployments that occurred in 2021 and 2022 the very first MDP MDP deployment was in collaboration with Ohio State University and was deployed at the LSU airport the second deployment was a request from Colorado State University for deployment at Colorado State University's Ardex site Colorado the third was an MDP deployment at the Consaprey biological station in Manhattan Kansas a briefly go over each one of these next the first deployment was in 2021 in collaboration with Ohio State University's Translational Data Analytics Institute they were interested in deploying the MDP at OSU airport to study environmental impact of aircraft combustion engines they proposed to use artificial intelligence and data science methods to extract the connection between aircraft activity and their sensor readings during this deployment OSU researchers added several sensors to the MDP tower and instrument hut to supplement the MDP sensors and measurements the second deployment was also in 2021 at Colorado State University's Agricultural Research Development and Education Center this project was was a subject of an NSF rapid award where researchers wanted to augment and integrate edge computing hardware into the neon MDP so an MDP would be ready to study wildfires there's a link in the to the NSF rapid award abstract in the chat this project had two phases phase one was testing and integrating the researchers equipment and sensors into an MDP and to ensure that it's fully functional and well integrated once tested and integrated the MDP would be ready for phase two there's actually a short YouTube video on the phase one of this project linked in chat the second phase of the project was to deploy this MDP to a contained Colorado wildfire though there were many wildfires that year we were actually unable to get the appropriate access and permissions to deploy the MDP during a contained wildfire but this did not deter the researchers and we provide and we pivoted and work with other research colleagues to get the MDP deployed to a controlled burn this brings us to the third MDP deployment that happened in the spring of 2022 this was in collaboration with the cons of prairie biological station where they were conducting prescribed burns because this was a controlled burn we were able to deploy the MDP before they burned together preburn data we operated the researchers equipment during the actual fire since their research question did involve fire detection and then we kept the MDP there for a short while after to collect the post burn data it was a very rare opportunity to be able to have to have equipment present and not be destroyed or ruined during a fire during the burn the researchers actually streamed the live video and data from the MDP tower we do have a short YouTube video on this deployment and it should be linked in the chat now I'd like to change gears a little and show you how one would go about requesting an MDP and the process involved requesting the MDP is very straightforward as with any assignable asset request we have specific request forms tailored to the type of request in this case the form would be the MDP request form and this can be found on the neon research support and assignable assets webpage as well as the MDP webpage a link a link to download the request form will also be linked in the chat once this form is filled out it could be emailed to the assignable assets program and a link to that email is in chat as well the request form itself has only a few basic questions to capture some initial information on the proposed project this includes a principal investigator and contact information a project overview so we could understand the project scope location dates funding status or sources as well as some additional information that will help us understand the proposed project essentially questions on who what when why and where request form is not thorough by any means and it's just the initiation of the request process in the beginning of the conversation we'll typically follow up with subsequent questions and set up a remote meeting to discuss the project further I'd like to change gears briefly to go over the actual request process itself here I'm showing a simplified process that MDP request would go through actually this process is the same for any neon assignable asset request this process here is for a research project that is seeking funding from a funding agency like the NSF step one the researcher submits the appropriate request form step two we then review it and conduct the feasibility review and cost analysis step three following the review and analysis we send results and budget back to the researcher for their review during this step we'll iterate with the researcher on the scope of work and the cost step four once the scope of the work in the budget is agreed upon the researcher would then submit the proposal to the funding agency in step five the researcher receives the results of their proposal and if they are funded we then move to step six step six this is where neon and the researcher work to finalize the scope the details of deployment finalize the budget and importantly set the contract for the work once we have a contract in place we could then move to implement the project and deploy the MDP in the field if the researcher already has funding in place the process is still the same minus the proposal submission to the funding agency the timeline for requesting and getting an MDP deploy could be quite lengthy so we suggest that MDP requests be submitted as soon as possible and as far out as possible this is because it takes time to iterate with the researcher on the scope of work and requirements the details of the deployment like power access insulation limitations etc we're meeting can take a lot of time sometimes months depending on the site since permitting is the responsibility of the requester people should be aware of permitting timelines this is often in an overlooked aspect so I want people to be aware of this potential delay contracting could take a month or more this usually depends on how fast Patel and the research institution can agree to the terms of a contract and then there is the scheduling of the field installation and civil construction teams our installation teams are usually busy doing work throughout the 81 sites of the observatory so we would need some time to make sure schedules can be coordinated and aligned finally once the contract is in place we can usually get MDP deployed to a site within 30 days of the contract being finalized so one way to think of this is that we are essentially trying to set up a complete neon site from scratch with each MDP deployment so each deployment is has has completely unique circumstances and has its own very unique site specific challenges so it does take a lot of time to get one of these deployed and set up properly we do recognize that research opportunities sometimes just happen without notice for example rapid changes in an ecosystem or a large disturbance in this case we will work with the researcher to work as rapidly as possible to get one of these deployed if they have the if you have the desire and the funding so we really do encourage people to reach out as early as possible if they want if they are interested in MDP we are near the end and just we're near the end and to summarize everything I'd like to show a video that quickly summarize what I presented here today this video could be viewed on the neon science youtube channel and we'll link that video in the chat here's a here's a short video neon's mobile deployment platforms or MDPs are flexible tools with which the community can adapt neon to their needs MDPs bring standardized scalable neon measurement systems to planned or ongoing research projects experiments or other existing network sites MDPs are self-contained research units built on a trailer platform that can be transported to road accessible remote locations these MDP systems are designed to gather ecological data about the atmosphere fresh water and soil they allow researchers to leverage the neon network and use the same standardized and validated instrument systems from across the observatory for their own research MDPs are a neon assignable asset that are requestable by individual researchers academic institutions government agencies research organizations and the private sector standard configurations include a trailer mounted instrument hut a ron 25g tower up to 100 feet tall and a suite of standardized neon terrestrial and aquatic instrumentation the MDP systems also have the expandable capability to accommodate additional researcher provided instrumentation sensors on the MDP can collect eddy covariance and trace gas measurements solar radiation and standard environmental measurements such as air temperature wind speed and direction precipitation atmospheric pressure and relative humidity these data can be combined with the MDP soil modules for measurements of soil CO2 flux moisture and temperature and soil heat flux a freshwater aquatics module is also available for researchers sands can be strategically placed in streams and rivers to capture data including conductivity pH dissolved oxygen and chlorophyll nitrate levels par water grab samples and water levels can also be collected using this MDP aquatic module the core of the MDP platform is housed in a secure instrument hut that connects to utility power but can also be powered for short periods with a trailer mounted propane generator system that keeps the data collection going well off grid system communications and data uploads are possible via direct wired or wireless network connections the data are stored locally within the instrument hut on neon's data acquisition system and also pushed to neon's data center for storage and processing using neon standard processing pipeline and qa qc algorithms the MDP can be monitored in real time for sensor data quality and validity to ensure the smooth collection of information neon technicians can also be alerted about any maintenance or repair issues researchers can easily download MDP data or use neon's processing algorithms so that the data collected at the MDP site is comparable with neon terrestrial and aquatic field sites across the U.S. through neon's assignable assets program researchers can easily request an MDP in support of their own research programs these requests undergo a feasibility evaluation by neon personnel and are operated on a cost recoverable basis requesters are responsible for obtaining permissions permits and funding for deployment which is often secured through grants administered by the national science foundation and other funding agencies visit neon science.org to learn more that was a short little video you could watch if you uh desire or for it at all so before we move to the q and a i do want to give mike the opportunity for any comments or anything that i missed mike no um i really think you covered that great i would just add that if specific instances of use you're considering or specific scenarios you might be interested in deploying an MDP to MDP to weren't mentioned here that doesn't mean they're not possible and that we as part of the assignable assets program will work with closely with researchers to try to accommodate their needs and get the project done thank you mike so now now we'd like to open this time for a q and a discussion um so we just want to see if anyone has any burning questions you could please put your questions inside the q and a and i guess if it's a long question i think you could raise our hand and i think we could invite them to speak is that right mike yep that is true and i can while people are thinking i can start with a couple of common questions we've had in the past from other groups um while people here are thinking and that would be rebelle how long can someone request an mdp for um right now that really kind of depends on the researchers project needs um they could be as short as as a month um and as long as a couple years um so the projects that you've seen that i presented earlier were usually from one to two months or one to three months um and we actually have a request in right now for a project deployment um up to about a year so really kind of depends on the um the research project the research question great and um another question is can you request just an aquatics module or just a tower or do you need to get the whole package you can actually just request aspects of it um if you request for the full suite you'll get the tower the aquatics module and whatnot but you can't ask for just the aquatics module for example if you're not interested in uh surface exchange or any covariance turbulence and just want the water module you could just request just that great and um if you're not familiar or the researchers not familiar with the instrumentation themselves does neon help with calibrating those instruments and maintaining them um neon maintains the entire system that includes the maintenance of the entire system and that includes also all the calibrations of it so the researcher ends up getting a full calibrated suite for the entire duration of the deployment you know and the maintenance is of course done by our trained neon um field technicians great great and what um what happened with the data does neon hosted or do they provide it to the researcher or is it published on the researcher's behalf by neon how does that work no neon's not designed to host any um external researchers data however neon will link the data to where the researchers have it posted so or they could actually post their data if they don't have their own database or their own website they could actually host it on um some other locations like uh edi which is the um a data repository that nsf also funds okay so the neon would provide the data to the researcher and then they would have access to work on it as they wish and then they could host that somewhere else um in collaboration with another repository or at their university or something okay that's correct and could you get more than one mdp is that possible to request more than one or is it limited to one so we have five total um and yes a researcher can request more than one particularly if they have multiple sites that they want to to do we we will know i will know because there are five we are limited to the number that we could actually deploy um and i will note that because these mdps are limited there might be conflicts right now we're not fully subscribed meaning that they're all not deployed right now so people can request up to five um but if there starts becoming some constraints and that's where we then have to to manage timing and how long and how many people could request great and what are some of the other advantages to using an mdp over trying to say set something up myself if i'm a researcher i'd imagine there's assistance with qaqc or processing of some sort and data that neon provides that might be beneficial yeah actually i mean any researcher could always set up their own nato covariant system collect really great data however what you get with a neon mdp is you get a full neon like system so you get all the standardization of the neon sensors the neon data processing the qaqc and you also get a fully calibrated system and you really get a turnkey system that the researcher doesn't have to kind of worry about great that's fantastic and a final question that we've received which i think is a popular question in the past is how much does deployment of an mdp cost is it a fixed cost or does it vary depending on things it varies greatly depending on the duration of the project where it's located the height of the tower the quality of the the quality of the the amount of maintenance that's that's requested and so it's there is no real fixed cost because each site is completely unique like i had mentioned before we're really setting up a neon like site every time we deploy an mdp so it can be costly you know costs can range from several tens of thousands up to several hundred thousand dollars for a full long-term deployment so then when when the researcher provides their their form with what they're looking to do that would be the the forum and the information we would use to generate or neon would use to generate the cost depending on the scope of their project is that correct exactly exactly and we work with the researcher to to try and optimize those costs as much as we can and so that so that they could so that we could meet their scientific goals great and there's another question in the q and a here which is with the priority for mdps given a university or similar affiliated ps if there is a high demand for the mdps how does neon balance interest in these of mdps by non-university ps will contracts link change or be limited if there's a high demand for mdps and i think is it correct that it's more not necessarily based on the university but it's it's msf funding is given priority is that correct exactly because it's because the observatory is an nsf observatory it's an sf facility nsf funded projects do get priority if there's a conflict like i said we have five of them right now right now none of them are deployed but if it does become a conflict we start looking at first nsf funding and then we start looking at other agencies from there right now if one is deployed there's a possibility it could be recalled but like i said we have five of them and not all of them are deployed right now and the demand isn't very high however when they are deployed you know they could be out for a long time so we'll work with the researcher and all the other researchers that have these in order to try and balance or meet the goals great um and i think that's all the questions from q and a and so i think um if no one has any others we could call that the end of the question if there's anything else great all i want to say thank you for to everybody who participated today um we will have this recording available on the website if there's anyone that missed it and then we can want to share it but otherwise thank you very much thank you all take care goodbye right now