Toward a Global Lake Ecological Observatory Network

The Global Lake Ecological Observatory Network (GLEON; www.gleon.org) is a grassroots network of limnologists, information technology experts, and engineers who have a common goal of building a scalable, persistent, international network of lake ecology observatories. Data from these observatories will help us to better understand key issues such as the effects of climate and landuse change on lake function, the role of episodic events such as typhoons or mixing events in resetting lake dynamics, and carbon cycling within lakes. The observatories consist of instrumented platforms capable of sensing key limnological variables and moving the data in near-real time, often through wireless networks, to web-accessible databases. A common web portal is being developed to allow easy access to data and information by researchers and the public. A series of web services supported by this portal are being developed to allow automation of processes associated with instrument management and data quality assurance/quality control, and to allow computation of metrics based on the high frequency data. Such metrics include, for example, estimates of rates of important processes such as gross primary production and respiration, or physical stability of the water column. Lakes from the following locations are currently in the network: Australia, Canada, China, Finland, Israel, New Zealand, South Korea, Taiwan, United Kingdom and the US. A global network of dozens or even hundreds of automated lake observatories, each collecting and transferring data in near real time, is within our grasp in the next decade, and will offer new opportunities in scientific collaboration and understanding of lake processes.