9 April 07
Budburst
Project Budburst is a new citizen science effort to monitor plant phenology — that is, the timing of biotic events such as leafing or flowering. In an era of climate change, tracking phenology is an important part of ecological monitoring.
This spring is the pilot for this project, and next year they will kick it off in full. They have a list of 59 species across the continental United States they are monitoring. It’s a bit of an eclectic list. I’d like to see them add my local phenological favorite: western redbud (Cercis occidentalis).
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Oh, what a cool site!
(I’d like to see them add the redbud, too.)
Darn, you beat me to it by a day. I’m glad they are doing it, but you can see why I want semantic ecoblogging to fill the gaps in such protocols. Our data collection won’t be as good but it will allow people to report whatever they see, whenever they want.
I found out about this from Old House Gardens’ Newsletter and put it on my blog last Friday.