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Local citizens to help catalog climate change
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Two years ago, while the rest of Lawrence basked in a beautiful warm spring day, University of Kansas professor Chip Taylor fretted.
It was April 2, and the ornamental crabapples on campus were in full bloom. Taylor's work in phenology - the study of the life cycles of plants and animals - showed that the blossoms came 12 days earlier than ever in Lawrence.
Two days later, an arctic blast come through and pushed the ground temperature to 14 degrees.
"It was below freezing for six consecutive days, and it killed everything," Taylor recalled. "Anything that was (blooming) too early really suffered significantly. We lost everything from ground level up to 60 feet in the trees. It was just brown here all over Lawrence."
The moral of Taylor's story is not to wish for a cold spring but rather to take a greater awareness of the life cycles around us.
That's why Taylor is thrilled the USA National Phenology Network is looking for citizen scientists to help catalog the world around them. The aim: To note the effects of climate change.
Jake Weltzin, executive director of the network, said it wanted to partner federal agencies with academic members, science organizations, non-government organizations (such as the Nature Conservancy and Defenders of Wildlife) and, well, anyone.
Including people right here.
"People in Kansas City are part of helping," Weltzin said.
"We want to have a relatively high density of observers across the United States because climate change is going to affect different parts of the United States differently. We're looking for early warning signs for what is happening."
At the organization's Web site ( www.usanpn.org), people can sign up to monitor one or more of the 200 or so plant species found across the United States. The organization eventually will expand to include animals and physical phenomena, such as bird migrations and ice on waterways.
Larry Rizzo of the Missouri Department of Conservation suggests people around Kansas City monitor species such as eastern redbuds, flowering dogwoods or even something like the common dandelion.
"Particularly for plants, you'd want to pick things that are conspicuous and have a very definite blooming time," Rizzo said. "Some plants start to bloom in a very gradual fashion. You'd want something more dramatic that you could make a call on."
Weltzin said the phenology project could benefit average citizens as well.
The network will be monitoring ragweed, which can make life miserable for allergy sufferers.
"We may find with a couple years' data that when people start seeing ragweed, there are 28 days on average when the ragweed blossoms come out - and that's the time when people start getting allergies," Weltzin said.
"You can say, 'Today's not a bad day, but three weeks from now is going to be bad.' "
Two years ago, while the rest of Lawrence basked in a beautiful warm spring day, University of Kansas professor Chip Taylor fretted.
It was April 2, and the ornamental crabapples on campus were in full bloom. Taylor's work in phenology - the study of the life cycles of plants and animals - showed that the blossoms came 12 days earlier than ever in Lawrence.
Two days later, an arctic blast come through and pushed the ground temperature to 14 degrees.
"It was below freezing for six consecutive days, and it killed everything," Taylor recalled. "Anything that was (blooming) too early really suffered significantly. We lost everything from ground level up to 60 feet in the trees. It was just brown here all over Lawrence."
The moral of Taylor's story is not to wish for a cold spring but rather to take a greater awareness of the life cycles around us.
That's why Taylor is thrilled the USA National Phenology Network is looking for citizen scientists to help catalog the world around them. The aim: To note the effects of climate change.
Jake Weltzin, executive director of the network, said it wanted to partner federal agencies with academic members, science organizations, non-government organizations (such as the Nature Conservancy and Defenders of Wildlife) and, well, anyone.
Including people right here.
"People in Kansas City are part of helping," Weltzin said.
"We want to have a relatively high density of observers across the United States because climate change is going to affect different parts of the United States differently. We're looking for early warning signs for what is happening."
At the organization's Web site ( www.usanpn.org), people can sign up to monitor one or more of the 200 or so plant species found across the United States. The organization eventually will expand to include animals and physical phenomena, such as bird migrations and ice on waterways.
Larry Rizzo of the Missouri Department of Conservation suggests people around Kansas City monitor species such as eastern redbuds, flowering dogwoods or even something like the common dandelion.
"Particularly for plants, you'd want to pick things that are conspicuous and have a very definite blooming time," Rizzo said. "Some plants start to bloom in a very gradual fashion. You'd want something more dramatic that you could make a call on."
Weltzin said the phenology project could benefit average citizens as well.
The network will be monitoring ragweed, which can make life miserable for allergy sufferers.
"We may find with a couple years' data that when people start seeing ragweed, there are 28 days on average when the ragweed blossoms come out - and that's the time when people start getting allergies," Weltzin said.
"You can say, 'Today's not a bad day, but three weeks from now is going to be bad.' "
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