A Continental Network to Monitor How We're Trashing the Environment

In some ways it's silly to draw a line between people and nature. People are a part of nature, naturally. But it would also be silly to discount the fact that people have had a negative impact on nature – from over-use of natural resources to insensitive land development patterns to widespread pollution and contamination. We know we can be a problem. Now, in a new continental-scale, 30-year science effort, we're trying to keep an eye on just how badly we're screwing things up.

Ground has just broken on this new effort, the National Ecological Observatory Network, or NEON, which will literally blanket the entire United States with dozens of monitoring stations to document how different ecosystems change as a result of climate change and differing land use patterns – essentially the kinds of environmental problems we can trace back to ourselves.