The National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) focuses on grand challenge questions in environmental science relevant to large regions that cannot be addressed with traditional ecological approaches. NEON will provide both physical and data infrastructures in order to provide usable information to scientists, teachers, students, citizens, governmental and non-governmental decision makers. This information must be provided across seven NEON challenge themes (biodiversity, biogeochemistry, climate change, ecohydrology, infectious disease, invasive species, and land use change) as a foundation to detect and quantify ecological responses to climate, land use and biological invasion and to establish the link between ecological cause and effect.

NEON high-level data products will enable ecological forecasts and analyses at a continental scale and facilitate the observation of decadal scale changes against a background of seasonal-to-interannual variability. The data products have been chosen to maximize utility to the community and to enable analysis of cause and effect in ecosystems and forecasting of the future states of ecosystems. Initially, NEON has identified about 120 high-level data products that will be derived from hundreds of low-level data products. All NEON data including raw data and calibration data will be openly available to the public.