SCIENCE sciencemag.org 18 JANUARY 2019 • VOL 363 ISSUE 6424 211PHOTO: THOMAS COLBY WRIGHT
T
he National Ecological Observatory
Network (NEON), a half-billion-dollar
facility funded by the National Sci-
ence Foundation (NSF), hopes to
revolutionize ecology by collecting an
unprecedented amount of data about
long-term environmental changes across
North America. But as NEON prepares to
begin full operations, an abrupt leadership
shake-up threatens to alienate the scientists
who will be using those data and, thus, are
essential to its success.
On 8 January, Sharon Collinge, NEON’s
chief scientist and principal investigator, re-
signed 4 days after Battelle Memorial Insti-
tute, which manages the network, fired two
senior managers without her knowledge or
consent. Within hours of Collinge’s resigna-
tion, Battelle dissolved NEON’s 20-member
technical advisory committee, heading off a
possible mass resignation of panel members
opposed to Battelle’s actions. The rapid-fire
developments came after years of cost over-
runs, construction delays, and debate over
the project’s scientific merits and left many
researchers bewildered and concerned.
Battelle “just burned some of the most
prominent ecologists in the country,” says
Ankur Desai, an atmospheric scientist at
the University of Wisconsin in Madison
who served on NEON’s now disbandedScience, Technology & Education Advisory
Committee (STEAC). “This has put the proj-
ect at massive risk.” He and other former
STEAC members want the advisory panel
reinstated and its role strengthened. Dis-
banding it “leaves NEON open to missteps
and ... is breeding mistrust in the user com-
munity,” they wrote in a 14 January letter to
Battelle executives and NSF leadership.
The upheaval is NEON’s latest self-
inflicted wound. First proposed by then–
NSF Director Rita Colwell in 2000, the
project has chewed up half a dozen scien-
tific directors—Collinge lasted less than a
year—ensnared two contractors, prompted
a congressional inquiry over spending and
management practices, and generated a
seemingly endless stream of critical reviews
by outside experts. Many ecologists also
worry that NEON’s $65-million-a-year oper-
ating budget will reduce the NSF funding
available for ecological research that doesn’t
rely on data from the 81-site facility, which
is headquartered in Boulder, Colorado.
Battelle took over NEON in 2016, after NSF
fired the project’s original contractor, and the
Columbus-based nonprofit is widely credited
with putting the project on the right track.
By the end of 2018 it had completed work on
all but one of NEON’s data-collecting sites,
for $10 million less than the latest projected
cost of $469 million. At a meeting in Novem-
ber 2018, members of the National ScienceBoard, NSF’s presi-
dentially appointed
oversight body, wel-
comed the progress.
“I feel we are in a
very happy place,”
said Inez Fung, an atmospheric scientist at
the University of California, Berkeley, who
had led an ad hoc panel created to keep close
tabs on NEON. (Fung has since rotated off
the board.) “I am looking forward to very
great discoveries,” she added.
But this month’s events have clouded
NEON’s future. On 4 January, Battelle ex-
ecutives removed Richard Leonard, who
had overseen the project’s turnaround, and
ecologist Wendy Gram, a senior manager
and head of engagement who had worked at
NEON since 2008. Within minutes, both had
been escorted out of NEON’s headquarters.
Collinge, who took a 2-year leave from
the University of Colorado in Boulder when
she joined NEON in February 2018, says
Battelle gave her no notice of the firings.
She sees them as the final straw in a series
of developments that had undermined her
ability to lead the observatory.
“I have not been granted the authority
to be successful,” she wrote to Battelle of-
ficials as she announced her decision to re-
turn a year early to her tenured position as
a professor of environmental studies. Bat-
telle had promised that she would have theIN DEPTH
By Jeffrey MervisENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCHShake-up threatens novel U.S. ecology facility
NEON science head quits, advisers fired after Battelle replaces two top managers
Ecologists take
vegetation measure-
ments in 2018 at
NEON’s Toolik Lake site
in northern Alaska.Published by AAASon January 18, 2019^http://science.sciencemag.org/Downloaded from