National-scale environmental observing systems, such as the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON), will transform environmental science by providing continuous measurements of key biological and chemical processes. Insights derived from these measurements will inform theory and policy on important topics including climate change, biodiversity, invasive species, and water and air quality. NEON will provide continentally distributed research infrastructure networked via cyberinfrastructure into a national research platform. A fundamental component of the NEON national backbone is a tightly integrated set of sensing systems (ie. towers and horizontally distributed wireless sensor networks) reliant on embedded cyberinfrastructure. The embedded cyberinfrastructure will be connected to an internet backbone via a "point of presence (POP) node to a data center server. This fundamental research system will be replicated across the US as the primary backbone of NEON. The final design for this cyberinfrastructure is vital to the final design and construction of NEON. No such cyberinfrastructure network has ever been constructed and the design is novel and untested.
