News & Publications

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Extremely early springs accelerate leafing phenology

Thu, Apr 06, 2017
Publication Summary

Extremely early springs such as the spring of 2012 are predicted to increase in frequency in future years, and much is still unknown about how leafing phenology will respond. Authors of a new study tracked the phenology of 43 populations of white ash and found that during the extreme year of 2012, ash leafed out an average of 21 days earlier than the non-extreme years. Changes in phenology can greatly impact a plant’s survival, as leaf-out in a seemingly early spring can put the plant at risk to damage from late-season frosts and freezes. Knowing when plants will leaf out can help farmers and gardeners to know when to plant crops and cover vulnerable early spring buds.

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How does the spring of 2017 stack up to the recent past?

Sat, Mar 04, 2017
News

March 20th is the Spring Equinox, which marks the official start of spring on your calendar. In 2017, the biological start of spring occurred much earlier than average in a large part of the Great Basin, Great Plains, Midwest, and mid-Atlantic.  Spring also arrived 2-3 weeks early across much of the South, although it typically has arrived by March 20th and therefore is represented as "average conditions" on this map. In the Great Basin and central Great Plains, spring arrived even earlier than 2012, a recent year with a very early start to spring.

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Phenology information can improve ecological restoration

Thu, Feb 16, 2017
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Restoration is a vital process to return degraded, damaged, or destroyed ecosystems to a state where they can support species of interest. While plant and animal phenology information is often used to determine the impact of environmental change on plants and animals, this information has not been widely used in the context of ecological restoration.  The authors found that phenology information improved restoration projects, informing what and when to plant, improving the timing of management actions, and increasing the efficiency of post-restoration monitoring. Adding phenology information into the toolkit of restoration managers will help them to be more efficient and effective in their restoration actions.

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Large herbivores track high-protein forage in spring

Wed, Nov 16, 2016
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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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Spring is advancing in three of every four National Parks

Tue, Oct 18, 2016
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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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Early springs and late-season freezes may become the new normal

Wed, Sep 21, 2016
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The “false spring” of 2012 was the earliest in an over 100 year record, and resulted in large-scale agricultural losses. To find out if these types of springs will become more common in the future, researchers used new climate change simulation models, including the USA-NPN’s Spring Indices, to distinguish natural climate fluctuations from longer-term trends. They found that by mid-century, we could see springs like that of 2012 as often as one out of every three years. They also found last freeze dates may not change at the same rate, resulting in more large-scale tissue damage and agricultural losses.

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Nature’s Notebook observations help to manage invasive buffelgrass

Wed, Aug 03, 2016
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Buffelgrass, an invasive perennial grass that responds well to fire and outcompetes natives, threatens to transform the current Sonoran desert landscape. Managers need to treat buffelgrass with herbicides when the plant is at least 50% green. The authors of a new study in the journal Remote Sensing found that buffelgrass responds quickly to rain, with plant green up occurring twice as fast in areas with buffelgrass than areas with mostly native vegetation. This information will help managers know when to get out to spray buffelgrass. Studies such as this, which integrate on-the-ground observations of phenology with satellite data, demonstrate the power of multiple data sources to inform management activities.

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Nature’s Notebook observations validate remotely-sensed data

Mon, Jul 18, 2016
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While there is great potential in linking data collected by observers on the ground and data collected by remote satellites, few studies have successfully combined these two types of data. Researchers from the Appalachian Laboratory at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science compared observations of leaf phenology collected through the Nature’s Notebook PopClock campaign to continental-scale satellite imagery collected by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MODIS). They implemented three quality control procedures that resulted in a high correlation between the two datasets (r2 = 0.67). Being able to more easily combine citizen science and remotely-sensed data will give scientists a large amount of information over a range of geographic scales, to better understand the response of forest plants to future changes in climate.

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