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February 21, 2008
Join Project BudBurst Citizen Science Campaign
Project BudBurst has launched its 2008 Citizen Science Campaign. Volunteers are need to collect important weekly climate change data on the timing of leafing and flowers of native tree and flower species. Starting this week, citizen-scientist volunteers from across the country can help track trends in phenology (e.g., first leaf, first flower) on many different species and see how these relate to climate.
Last year's inaugural event drew thousands of people of all ages taking careful observations of the phenological events such as the first bud burst, first leafing, first flower, and seed or fruit dispersal of a diversity of tree and flower species, including weeds and ornamentals. The citizen science observations and records were entered into the BudBurst database.
Scientists are using the data to learn about the responses of individual plant species to local, regional and national climate variation, and to detect longer-term impacts of climate change by comparing the new observations with historical data.
To learn more about the project or to register as a volunteer, go to www.budburst.org. Registration is easy. To help you get started, the site lists the plant species targeted for our area, a plant identification guide to help you determine the phenological phase of the plant, and a link for reporting observations online.
Posted by hbraun at February 21, 2008 1:28 PM