I successfully defended my PhD, and had a lot of [type II] fun in the process. You can watch my presentation, look through my slides, and access my *draft* dissertation that still requires more edits before it's finalized. Enjoy.
The NEON project was at its infancy when I began my dissertation. They were literally building and installing the ~30 sites around North America at the same time they were sampling soils for my project. Although my PhD focuses on the soils aspect, there is a wealth of publicly available data being generated that any scientist should be aware of.