National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON)

The KU Field Station is one of more than 80 sites that make up the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON), one of the most extensive projects ever initiated by the National Science Foundation; it is operated by the private company Batelle Inc. The purpose of this contintentwide project is to to collect long-term open access ecological data to better understand how U.S. ecosystems are changing.

The Field Station is one of three sites in NEON's Prairie Peninsula Domain; Konza Prairie, a site managed by Kansas State University, about 90 minutes away, is the core site for the Prairie Peninsula Domain. At the KU Field Station, a tower equipped with various sensors for environmental monitoring was installed, and the data from this site, and all NEON sites, is freely available to anyone.