Onaqui NEON - United States of America

The Onaqui (ONAQ) field site is a core terrestrial site within NEON's Domain 15: Great Basin. The Onaqui site is located approximately 80km southwest of Salt Lake City. It is characterized by the sagebrush and western juniper community that dominates the Great Basin. The Great Basin Domain is bordered by the Sierra Nevada to the west, the Rocky Mountains and Colorado Plateau to the east, the Mojave Desert to the south, and the Columbia Plateau to the north. Remote sensing surveys of this field site collect lidar, spectrometer and high-resolution RGB camera data. The flux/meteorological tower at this site is 26ft 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 and soil data.