Rocky Mountains NEON - United States of America

The NEON site at Rocky Mountain National Park (RMNP) is a relocatable terrestrial field site and part of NEON's Central Plains Domain 10. RMNP is located seventy kilometers northwest of Denver, the RMNP site includes National Park and Forest Service land in the foothills of Colorado. The NEON tower and corresponding TOS plots are located in a property that is owned by the National Park Service but outside of Rocky Mountain National Park's core boundaries. TOS distributed plots are located within the Roosevelt National Forest (U.S. Forest Service). The area is a populardestination for hiking, camping, shooting, and other recreational activities. Remote sensing surveys of this field site collect lidar, spectrometer and high-resolution RGB camera data. The flux/meteorological tower at this site is 81’ with 5 measurement levels. The tower top extends above the vegetation canopy to allow sensors mounted at the top and along the tower to capture the full profile of atmospheric conditions from the top of the vegetation canopy to the ground. The tower collects physical and chemical properties of atmosphere-related processes, such as humidity, wind, and net ecosystem gas exchange. Precipitation data are collected by a tipping bucket at the top of the tower and a series of throughfalls located in the soil array. This site has five soil plots placed in an array within the airshed of the flux tower. Field ecologists collect the following types of observational data at this site: Terrestrial organisms (birds, ground beetles, mosquitoes, plants, small mammals, soil microbes, ticks), Biogeochemical data, and soil data. Total data products planned for this site: 116