The National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) is a national-scale research platform for assessing the impacts of climate change, land-use change, and invasive species on ecosystem structure and function. NEON partitions the United States into 20 ecoclimate domains. Each domain hosts fully instrumented aquatic sites in permanent (wildland area) and relocatable sites (36 sites in current definition). Relocatable sites aims to capture ecologically significant contrasts within and between domains.

Microorganisms have confounded biogeographers because of their high dispersal capability, small size, and vast diversity and abundance. Here we use pyrosequencing, bioinformatics tools, and geospatial modeling to reveal that the genetic relatedness of soil bacteria varies in a predictable pattern across a landscape. Microbial communities showed strong spatial autocorrelation to a distance of 240 meters and this pattern was driven by changes in the genetic relatedness and abundance of specific clades across the landscape.

It is well established that hydrological and ecological processes are closely coupled in natural ecosystems. The nature of this coupling is greatly altered in urban environments, where the built environment has modified ecosystem structure and function. These alterations are particularly pronounced in arid urban environments where the hydrological response is typically very flashy. We present a conceptual model of ecohydrological interactions in arid urban environments, focusing on feedbacks among hydrology, ecosystem structure, biogeochemistry, and erosion across multiple spatial scales.

 Tropical reef ecosystems lie at the interface of productive, populated terrestrial coastlines and unproductive, oligotrophic oceanic waters. Corals and other dominant reef organisms maintain complex symbiotic interactions with both surficial and planktonic aquatic microbial communities, but the processes defining the composition and life history of these communities are poorly understood.

Patterns of phenology for plants and animals control ecosystem processes, determine land surface properties, control biosphere-atmosphere interactions, and affect food production, health, conservation, and recreation. Although phenological data and models have applications related to scientific research, education and outreach, agriculture, tourism and recreation, human health, and natural resource conservation and management, until recently there was no coordinated effort to understand phenology at the national scale.

Patch-scale connectivity is frequently cited as a significant factor controlling redistribution of water, organic matter and nutrients in many arid and semi-arid ecosystems. The ‘leakiness’ of these systems has been cited as an indicator of degradation. Methods to limit or modify soil loss and redistribution are included in many restoration strategies.