Recently, scientists from environmental fields such as ecology, environmental engineering, oceanography, seismology, and hydrological sciences have initiated efforts to design and build networks of field-based measurement systems generically called observatories. Analogous in scope to the community-accessible telescopes common in astronomy, these observatories are distributed across the country and capitalize on cyberinfrastructure advances in measurement systems, networking, data management, and visualization. CENS technology has the potential to enable these observatories. CENS faculty and staff have actively participated developing technology appropriate for two of these efforts: the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON), a research platform designed to advance understanding of how ecosystems and organisms respond to variations in climate and changes in land use, and CLEANER, a network of environmental facilities for environmental engineering research.