International Cooperation

The Global Lake Ecological Observatory Network (GLEON)

The Global Lake Ecological Observatory Network is a grassroots network of limnologists, ecologists, information technology experts, and engineers who have a common goal of building a scalable, persistent network of lake ecology observatories. Data from these observatories will allow us to better understand key processes such as the effects of climate and landuse change on lake function, the role of episodic events such as typhoons in resetting lake dynamics, and carbon cycling within lakes. 

The observatories will consist of instrumented platforms on lakes around the world capable of sensing key limnological variables and moving the data in near-real time to web-accessible databases. A common web portal will allow easy access to researchers and the public. A series of web services supported by this portal will allow computation of metrics based on the high frequency data. Such metrics would include estimates of rates of important processes such as gross primary production and respiration.