Project BudBurst engages people from across the United States in the collection of important climate change data based on the timing of leafing and flowering of trees and flowers. Project BudBurst participants take careful observations of the phenological events such as the first leafing, first flower, and first fruit ripening for a variety of plant species including trees, shrubs, flowers, grasses, weeds and ornamentals. Project BudBurst is particularly interested in observations of native plant species. The citizen science observations are reported online to a national database. As a result valuable environmental and climate change information is being collected in a consistent way across the country. Scientists can use this data to learn about the responses of individual plant species to climatic variation locally, regionally, and nationally, and to detect longer-term impacts of climate change by comparing with historical data.
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University Corporation for Atmospheric Research Office of Outreach and EducationChicago Botanic GardenUniversity of MontanaSandra Henderson
Each year over 120,000 Tasmanians go fishing at least once. Imagine...120,000 potential scientists collecting valuable data about the marine environment! We did. Welcome to Redmap! We invite the community to spot, log and map marine species that are uncommon in Tasmania, or along particular parts of our coast, addressing key knowledge gaps in partnership with industry and community. Redmap has proven to be a useful engagement tool to raise awareness about climate change.
The North American Bird Phenology Program houses a unique and largely forgotten collection of six million Migration Observer Cards that illuminate migration patterns and population status of birds in North America. These handwritten cards contain almost all of what was known of bird status from the Second World War back to the later part of the 19th century. The bulk of the records are the result of a network of observers who recorded migration arrival dates in the spring and fall that, in its heyday, involved 3000 participants. Today, those records are being processed and placed online where volunteers, worldwide, can go onto the BPP website and transcribe these images into our database for analysis. This information will be used, along with recently collected arrival times of migrant birds, in conjunction with historical weather data to show how migration is affected by climate change.
This poster was presented at the April 2011 workshop, Engaging and Learning for Conservation. This poster explains the meaning of phenology and describes the Nature's Notebook program that engages observers across the nation to collect phenology observations on both plants and animals.
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Jake WeltzinNational Phenology Network
The Vanessa Migration Project is a citizen science program that has been active since April 2001 as part of the Red Admiral and Painted Lady Research Site. Citizen observers in North America report their sightings of date, location, flight direction, and other activity of four butterflies of the genus Vanessa (V. atalanta, V. cardui, V. virginiensis, and V. annabella). Objectives include 1) monitoring butterflies and their yearly seasonal distribution; 2) tracking migrations and outbreaks; and 3) studying effects of weather and climatic patterns on butterfly activity.
The USA National Phenology Network brings together citizen scientists, government agencies, non-profit groups, educators and students of all ages to monitor the impacts of climate change on plants and animals in the United States. The network harnesses the power of people and the Internet to collect and share information, providing researchers with far more data than they could collect alone.
Rothamsted Research is the oldest agricultural research station in the world. It is internationally recognised for its long history of entomological studies, including the Rothamsted Insect Survey which has operated a national network of light traps since 1968. Most of the traps are operated by volunteers, with approximately 90 traps running each year. Altogether, over 460 sites have run for a minimum of one year and 54 have operated for at least 15 years. This has become one of the world’s largest and broadest contemporary insect biodiversity databases, with over 12 million individual macro-moth records. These records are used for fundamental ecological research, linking the effects of land use and climate change with population and distribution changes of common British moths. Recently, data have been used to show dramatic declines and changes in distribution for many common species throughout the UK.
AMC's Mountain Watch is a citizen scientist monitoring program whereby hikers monitor and report the timing of alpine and mountain forest flowers bud break and flowering and document air quality from mountain vistas. Mountain Watch plant observations will aid researchers in understanding how and by what magnitude the biota on the mountains are responding to observed statistical changes in climate variables like temperature and snowmelt.
IceWatch USA™, a program of Nature Abounds, brings citizen science volunteers the opportunity to help scientists study how our climate is changing! In as little as 10 minutes, volunteers can report information that will help to analyze how our climate will change in different regions of the United States, and how our ecosystems are reacting to the change. IceWatch USA™ is modeled after and a proud partner of Ice Watch Canada.