The NEON site at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) is a 138.1-km^2 core terrestrial field site located in the Cumberland Plateau within Anderson and Roane Counties, TN. It is encompassed within NEON's Appalachians and Cumberland Plateau Domain 7, which includes the worlds longest expanse of hardwood-forested plateau. This domain is home to some of North America's greatest diversity of fish, mollusk, and wildflower species. ORNL is managed by a combination of the Department of Energy (DOE) and Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency (TWRA). The Domain hosts four other NEON field sites, two aquatic and two terrestrial, three of which are located in Tennessee. Remote sensing surveys of this field site collect lidar, spectrometer and high-resolution RGB camera data.
The flux/meteorological tower at this site is 127 with 6 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: 119
