NEON scientist: a new career choice in ecology

It's 8:30 am and a touch chilly at –32°C and I'm standing around at the Caribou‐Poker Creeks Research Watershed site in central Alaska. I'm waiting while the space heater that's set up under a makeshift tent and plugged into the generator I slept with in my hotel room (to keep it warm enough to start here in the field) – is blowing hot air on the engine block of our drilling rig, so it too will start. This is what it takes to meet construction schedules, complete drilling holes for NEON soil temperature and moisture sensors, and supply the NEON Soil Archive with samples, which my colleagues and yours can request for their research. In my view this is the most exciting part of being a network scientist – not standing around freezing per se, but rather contributing to a national platform that will support scientific advancements in ecology over the next three decades. For me, it's the highly collaborative and altruistic nature of NEON that makes it most appealing. – MSC “Slugs and slug slime? Why do I, as a small mammal ecologist, have to worry about slugs?”, I say to the patient Harvard Forest researcher who is helping me and the NEON field staff implement the NEON small mammal protocol (I had written) for the first time at the Harvard Forest LTER/NEON site. In the decade or so of field experience trapping small mammals in the Southwestern US I had under my belt at that point, I never (ever!) had to deal with slugs filling the traps and covering them with their slime. This is one of many things I have learned as a NEON scientist attempting to devise a clear and comprehensive field sampling protocol that can be applied across an incredible diversity of ecosystems. Helping to design and implement a standardized network of sampling has been one of the most challenging and rewarding aspects of my career. Each site presents new obstacles to overcome in order to fulfill NEON's mission to transform our ability to understand ecological dynamics across spatial and temporal scales. – KMT In today's scientific landscape there are numerous invaluable networks; examples include the Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) Network, the AmeriFlux Network, the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON), the National Critical Zone Observatory Program, and the Long‐Term Agroecosystem Research Network. These networks are critical to furthering our understanding of mechanistic site‐based ecological principles, monitoring fluxes across the landscape, interpreting interactions between environmental change and agricultural practices, and more. Countless opportunities exist for