If you’re concerned about global warming, consider stopping to smell the roses—then record the date, location, and budding phase of the flowers. A new program is enlisting the help of citizens to track the country’s climate through the blooms and buds of its plants.

Climate change can be as devastating as a hurricane or as welcomed as an early spring. Temperature, precipitation, and snowmelt, however, influence plant life cycles, which in turn, affect animal reproduction and survival. Seasonal changes cue many organisms to mate, migrate, pollinate, sow fields, or buy a bathing suit—when these signals fall out of sync, ecosystems, wildlife populations, and even businesses can collapse.

So the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, a collaboration of 71 universities that offer degrees in atmospheric science, has launched Project Budburst, a nationwide program that employs everyday citizens to record when and where plants and trees flower and drop their seeds and fruit. The data will help scientists get a fuller understanding of how certain species and ecosystems around the country are responding to global warming.

“Phenology is nature’s clock, and we really hope that citizens will get outside and watch it,” says Carol Brewer, a biologist at the University of Montana who works with the program. “Scientists working on climate change just can’t visit every place these species live. We really need help from people across the nation.”

To start tracking plants, just sign up online and start typing in your observations. Since mid-February, thousands of Americans have registered for Project Budburst, and hundreds have already submitted their findings online. The project’s website lists some 60 target species with tips on where and how to spot them.  And it’s already gathered some interesting data: Chicago’s snow drops bloomed in early January, the first crocuses are popping up in Montana, daffodils are already sprouting in the Bronx, leaves in Denver’s trees are unfurling and in Boston—well, nothing yet.

The data will not only allow scientists to document what’s happening now, but could also help them predict future changes. “There are cases where changes in flowering dates and phenology are detrimental, and like in any story, there will be winners and losers,” says botanist Abe Miller-Rushing of the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory. “If I’m in Massachusetts and want to get an idea of what the oak trees will be doing in 100 years, I’d start looking at what the oak trees are doing now in Virginia.”         

During his doctoral studies at Boston University, Miller-Rushing and biologist Richard Primack researched the meticulous observations of Henry David Thoreau. In the 1850s, Thoreau detailed the natural areas around Concord, Massachusetts, and in 2004, Primack traced his phenological footsteps, seeking out the same flora Thoreau described as he walked the woods surrounding Walden Pond. Primack found some of the species were flowering more than three weeks earlier than they had in the mid-nineteenth century.

“It’s really quite remarkable,” Primack says of Thoreau’s records. “Going back 150 years is pretty extraordinary for the United States.” The Japanese have been taking tally of Kyoto’s cherry blossom blooms since the ninth century, and the French have kept account of their Burgundy grape harvests since the 1300s. Notwithstanding the notes of Thoreau—and famed ecologist Aldo Leopold, whose family has continued his floral bookkeeping of their Wisconsin farm since 1936—such long-term data in the New World is hard to come by.

Project Budburst aims to change that. In addition to encouraging schoolchildren and gardeners to participate, the program allows farmers, botanical gardens, and other naturalists to submit past observations. Kay Havens of the Chicago Botanic Garden is coming up with a list that will even allow people in Hawaii—where flowers bloom year round—to get involved.

“We really did try to pick a few species that everybody should be able to find,” says Brewer. “We want people who live in the middle of a big city to be able to participate without driving somewhere.”

Of course, there are many ways to reconnect with nature while helping the scientific community. Every winter, the Audubon Society holds its Christmas bird count to census America’s birds, while Cornell University hosts programs to monitor backyard birdfeeders and birdhouses. Journey North enlists schoolchildren around the globe to track migrations of animals ranging from monarch butterflies to gray whales.           

But if you prefer chasing down less mobile species, there are always bluebells, lilacs, Douglas firs, and dandelions. 

“There are shrubs in city planters,” says Brewer. “Pick a species that you’ve heard of and one that looks like it will be easy to identify, print out a picture of it, and then take a walk."

Posted on Mar 20, 2008 at 8:40 AM
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