Established in the second largest domain within NEON, the Northern Great Plains Research Laboratory (NOGP) is a relocatable terrestrial research site located 6 miles west of Bismarck North Dakota. The site is managed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Agriculture Research Service for over 100 years . The site is full of sprawling grassland vegetation which represent much of the 770,995 square kilometers. Remote sensing surveys of this field site collect lidar, spectrometer and high-resolution RGB camera data.
The flux/meteorological tower at this site is 26' with 4 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: 108