Building a National Phenology Network

When wildflowers pop up sooner than expected, get ready. Wildfires are on the way.

The environmental conditions that lead to early blooms—like drought—cause fires too. But the links don’t stop there. The timing of plant and animal activity can help predict everything from peak allergy season to future water supply to the best harvest time.

The study of that ecological timing is called phenology. Researchers monitor events like plant activity, animal migration, and insect emergence to determine how environmental changes are influencing the lives of plants and animals and, ultimately, what those changes mean for people.

The question of how phenological data can be used is open ended, said Theresa Crimmins, network liaison for the USA National Phenology Network (NPN).

The National Phenology Network enlists researchers, citizens, and others to monitor changes in climate by observing plant and animal lifecycle events affected by climate like this blooming palo verde tree.

Credit: Brent & Christy Melton, istockphoto.com

The NPN is coordinating with other phenology projects to gather data on a national scale. From school children to scientific researchers, everyone is encouraged to monitor their surroundings and submit their observations to an online data bank.

“The sky is the limit in terms of how this stuff can be used and applied,” Crimmins said, adding that refuge, water, land, and park managers are some of the obvious beneficiaries of more extensive, reliable data.

More data is especially needed to pinpoint trophic mismatches that climate change is causing. A trophic mismatch occurs when the availability of a resource, like food, shifts in response to warming temperatures while the timing of the demand for that resource doesn’t change, disrupting a formerly synchronous relationship.

Along the Colorado River corridor migrating birds are facing a mismatch that’s leaving them without the food, such as insects, they need to sustain their travels.

Certain birds choose stopover locations based on the flowering of the honey mesquite tree, said USGS Researcher Charles van Riper. Because flowers attract insects, birds view them as a cue to land. While flowering and the arrival of insects tend to overlap, warmer temperatures cause flowers to bloom earlier—before insects arrive.

“A bird using the cue of the white and yellow flowering goes down and starves to death,” van Riper said. “As global climate change occurs and changes these cues, it will continue influencing the amount of overlap of a resource and the availability of that resource.”

While mismatches occur at every trophic level, they become more harmful as the size of the at-risk animal increases. “The further up the chain you are, the bigger you are, the more affected you’ll be by a mismatch because you don’t have the ability to change dramatically,” van Riper said.

As climate change continues, phenological information could prove invaluable in the future for detecting even small changes in the climate and developing effective management options based on those changes. For that reason, the NPN is fostering the development of regional phenology networks that can focus on plants and animals specific to an area. “We want to serve as the jumping off point so that the information can be as widely applicable as possible,” she said.

The network serves as the national coordinating office, bringing together federal agencies, educational institutions, regional networks, and citizens interested in monitoring how ecosystems are responding to climate change.

Network participants can choose between three observation levels, based on their expertise. Everyone is qualified to participate in Project Bud Burst, an outreach program that serves as an introduction into phenological monitoring.

For researchers with limited time, or citizen scientists with some botanical knowledge, the NPN Core Protocols serve as more intensive observational guidelines. And, for researchers with more time or citizen scientists with advanced botanical knowledge, the NPN Intensive Protocols are an option.

The NPN hopes to involve “anyone playing any role in phenology,” Crimmins said. “This is a true network.”