Global Lake Ecological Observatory Network

GLEON uses innovative human capacity building for discovery, solving problems, catalyzing and creating learning communities, education, FAIR data, and Open Science.

The goal is to understand, predict, and communicate the impact of natural and anthropogenic influences on lake and reservoir ecosystems.

The researchers include limnologists, ecologists, information technology experts, and engineers who have a common objective of building and growing a scalable, persistent network of lake ecology observatories; developing new theoretical models based on the more extensive spatial and temporal scales of data; integrating new technologies to utilize the data; educating a new generation of researchers in team science; and engaging the public.

Each lake or reservoir observatory consists of one or more instrumented platforms capable of sensing key limnological variables and moving the data in near-real time to web-accessible databases.

Many of the observatories also track meteorological parameters on the lake such as solar radiation, wind speed, and relative humidity.