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Compiling this newsletter, I feel stronger than ever about the mission you all support - promoting a broad understanding of plant and animal phenology and its relationship with environmental change. Phenology affects nearly all aspects of the environment, including the abundance, distribution, and diversity of organisms, ecosystem services, food webs, and global cycles of water and carbon. The data that you collect help scientists, resource managers and the public to better understand and protect these aspects of the environment.
Just in the last two months, an article was published showing that spring is advancing in our beloved National Parks, and another article affirmed the great contributions of citizen scientists to biodiversity monitoring across the globe. Plus, we surpassed our lofty goal of 2 million records submitted to Nature's Notebook this year, meaning more science questions will be answered, more management decisions will be informed, and more people will learn about the importance of phenology.
Here at USA-NPN, we want to express our continuing commitment to the work that you all support, and our sincere appreciation to all of you dedicated Nature's Notebook observers. Each observation you make is important. Thank you for being a part of our team.
Sincerely,
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What your data are telling us
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Photo: Brian F Powell |
Spring advancing in 3 of every 4 National Parks
A new study by researchers at the USA National Phenology Network, US Geological Survey, University of Arizona, Schoodic Institute, Cornell University and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee shows that climate change is already happening on public lands. The authors found that spring is advancing in 76% of the 276 Parks studied, and 53% of parks are experiencing extreme early springs that exceed 95% of historical conditions.
Better knowledge of warming trends will help Parks
to treat invasive species, operate visitor facilities, and schedule popular
climate-related events, such as flower festivals and fall leaf-viewing.
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Learn what Shady Invaders told us this year
Shady Invaders is a project created with researchers at Penn State University to explore the timing of leafing on invasive and native shrubs. Invasive shrubs are becoming increasingly common in eastern forests, and some have been found to break bud earlier and maintain leaves later than native shrubs. This can have benefits to the invasive shrubs (e.g. longer period of photosynthesis) and impacts to native flora and fauna (e.g. novel shading and competition early and late in the growing season).
In this webinar, Erynn Maynard, researcher at Penn State University,
will explain why your observations of invasive and native shrubs are
important, and tell you what we
learned from observations of Shady
Invaders species
this year. The webinar will be on
November 29th,
10am PST, 11am MST, 12pm CST, 1pm EST.
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What's new at
Nature's Notebook
and USA-NPN
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Two million records submitted this year 
Wow! We are so impressed by all of you dedicated Nature's Notebook observers - you have already submitted over 2 million observation records this year! That means that you helped us reach our goal with nearly 2 months remaining in 2016.
Let's see how far past 2 million we can get this year. Keep those observations coming!
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Phenology Primer for Plants now available 
It's here! The first section of the Phenophase Primer is now available for download. This beautifully illustrated guide provides detailed information on how to identify each of the phenophases we ask you to observe on the Nature's Notebook datasheets.
Please note that this is a draft version; a final version with information about conifers and more photos will be released next year. Once all three sections are complete, we will offer a printed and bound copy, much
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Recent happenings in the field
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Photo: USFWS Headquarters via Wikimedia Commons |
Large herbivores track high-protein forage
Finding high-quality foraging areas is crucial for hungry herbivores in the spring months. Researchers of a new study in Proceedings of the Royal Society B studied five species of herbivores in Wyoming and Utah to see whether animals matched their movements with the spring green-up of their forage across the landscape. They found that 7 of the 10 populations studied selected patches of forage in the early growth stage, supporting the hypothesis that these animals track the green wave. Learning more about how animals select habitat patches, and how
much flexibility exists in their behavior, will help managers to protect these
species in the face of future climate change and land development.
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Photo: Brian F Powell |
Citizen science makes important contributions to biodiversity monitoring
A new study lead by an international team of researchers and published in
Biological Conservation found that citizen science is already making important contributions to large-scale international biodiversity monitoring. Citizen science programs are monitoring species occurrence,
abundance, and phenology across the globe.
Nature's
Notebook
is
highlighted as one of the programs that documents
species
traits and
community composition, and is readily scalable, through
integration of ground and satellite observations.
The authors make
recommendations
for how
citizen science can be expanded to better
cover certain geographic
locations, taxa, and aspects of biodiversity like
population structure and
dispersal of young animals.
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| Nature's Notebook Nuggets |
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Photo: Ellen G Denny |
A year of phenophases for a conifer
Nature's Notebook includes conifer species of three types: those having deciduous needles, those with fascicled needles (the pines), and evergreen conifers having single or clustered needles that are not like a pine's needles and are not deciduous. We take a quick look at the phenophases that Nature's Notebook observes within their annual cycle: the seasonal progression of new needles, male pollen cones, and female seed cones.
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Photo: Brian F Powell |
So many Nature's Notebook Nuggets to explore
We covered a lot of topics this year in our Nature's Notebook Nuggets series, including tips for recording initial growth, how to know when a phenophase begins and ends, and the reason you might want to observe more than one individual of each species. You can find all these Nuggets and more on our website and brush up on your Nature's Notebook knowledge.
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More ways to get involved
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Find citizen science opportunities where you live
Our Education Coordinator, LoriAnne Barnett, recently teamed up with Park Ranger colleagues from the Army Corps of Engineers at the 2016
National Association for Interpretation Conference for a presentation on the importance of citizen science in gathering critical data for research and management.
There are many opportunities for citizens to participate in a variety of research projects sponsored by parks, natural areas, botanic gardens, and more, across the US.
The next time you visit your favorite
Environmental Education location, check to see if they engage in citizen
for information on how they can implement a long-term Nature's Notebook
phenology monitoring program that you can contribute to when you visit.
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Photo: Brian F Powell
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What resources do you need?
Are there particular areas in
Nature's Notebook where you feel you need further instruction? Let us know! Give us your ideas for future instructional videos, text guides, or webinars that would help you to become a better
Nature's Notebook observer. You can help guide the resources we develop next year.
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