The Beaver Creek Watershed (BCW) is located in the southwest portion of Domain 13 (Figure 1). The watershed lies 80 km south of Flagstaff in the Central Arizona Highlands, at the transition between the Basin and Range and Colorado Plateau physiographic provinces. Beaver Creek is one of several drainages that dissect the Mogollon Plateau and drain into the Verde River. The watershed is a natural ecological laboratory, providing habitats for a wide variety of flora and fauna. Beaver Creek is a UNESCO Man and the Biosphere Reserve and a designated US Forest Service Experimental Watershed. The experimental watershed was established to function as a major center for watershed management research.

The BCW is an exemplary core site for five key reasons:

        1) Characteristic of Domain 13 (vegetation, climate, soils, hydrology)

        2) Ideal for supporting both terrestrial and aquatic research to address the two focal NEON drivers, climate change
        and land use

        3) Available regional expertise, laboratories, and complementary research to ensure leveraging of NEON funds

        4) Institutional support and availability of facilities

        5) Strong legacy of research that NEON can build upon

Thus, the BCW has many of the critical elements required for a core site to be successful, and
together with other core sites, would realize the national-scale observatory network for monitoring ecological dynamics.