Presenter: Megan A. Jones, Battelle/NEON  

Abstract: NEON, the National Ecological Observatory Network, is an NSF-funded large science facility, operated by Battelle, is designed to collect extensive ecological and environmental data from across the U.S. for the next 30 years. A primary product of NEON is freely available, open access data for use by the scientific research community as well as by students and others who will explore the petabytes of information that will be available during the lifetime of the Observatory. Using NEON data, however, may not be an easy task for researchers, faculty, and students who are not familiar with “big data” access, management and analytic methods. Many ecologists are transitioning to using data science and big data methods including programming-based data management and analysis, complex data portals and APIs that provide access to lots of different types of data, and diverse analytical methods beyond those classically used in their individual research area. Furthermore, ecological data is usually messy in the sense that variability and uncertainty are important components of data analysis and interpretation. Given these challenges, how do we accelerate the use of big data in ecological research and education? How to we create equitable opportunities for data and resource access to all interested individuals? How do we engage communities that have not traditionally been drawn to careers in ecology but for which data science focused careers may provide new opportunities?