SFS 2025 Additional Workshop Facilitators: Nick Harrison & Zach Nickerson
The National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) provides open data from a continental-scale network of monitoring locations, including 34 aquatic sites stationed in stream, river, and lake ecosystems. This hands-on coding workshop will teach participants how to access, interpret, manipulate and visualize NEON aquatic data within the R statistical software environment.
Instruction will include an overview of the breadth of NEON aquatic datasets available for data users before providing code-along instruction in R. The goal of the workshop is to foster a capable NEON data user community with a focus on linking observational data, including organismal and water quality data collected by teams of field ecologists, with instrument data collected from a network of high-frequency sensors. Linking continuous stream discharge and other instrument data with aquatic macroinvertebrate community data and observational water quality data will be a highlight of the code-along. For example, participants may explore how macroinvertebrate communities respond to changes in stream discharge, water temperature, and turbidity levels in sub-tropical watersheds of Puerto Rico affected by intense storms (NEON Domain 04). Time will be reserved at the end of the workshop for attendees to explore additional NEON data products and to discuss and ask questions regarding their own research projects. Basic familiarity with R is required for participation in the workshop.