An award has been made to Utah State University under the direction of Dr. Todd Crowl and colleagues, Dr. David Breshears, Arizona State University, and Dr. Philip Robertson, Michigan State University, to support the efforts of the Consortium of Regional Ecological Observatories (COREO) in the of formulation of regional activities that will support national questions that will ultimately drive the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON). The sixteen regional groups that gave rise to COREO formed institutional collaboratives, assessed regional resources, and formulated regional research agendas. The overall goal of COREO is to engage the broader scientific, educational, and engineering communities in an organized set of activities that will formulate the regional perspective regarding the organization and question-driven design of the NEON. The participation of regional groups will assure that the infrastructure design addresses the regionally varying drivers and provides the capacity to address questions at regional scales. The COREO organization, workshops, assessments, and web site will provide a structured process to aid in the design of a national research platform that will transform ecological science by providing innovative infrastructure that will permit questions of national significance to be addressed at regional to continental scales. COREO will play an integral role in the iterative, web-based process of NEON plan development. COREO will inform and participate in the NEON Design Consortium planning process and provide essential assessments that identify, organize, and summarize existing data, infrastructure, and intellectual resources available to support the NEON design and implementation. Further, COREO will engage decision makers, agencies, and administrators in the broader NEON design process. Finally, the proposed efforts will provide a forum to create collaboratives that design regional to national scale science that will be dependent on the NEON research platform.
