USA National Phenology Network
The USA National Phenology Network monitors the influence of climate on the phenology of plants, animals, and landscapes. The group provides tools for citizen scientists to collect, store, and share information on plant and animal life cycle events such as leaf out, flowering, and migration. USA-NPN tools can be used to engage audiences in project planning, data collection, and analysis to understand the impact of climate change on phenology for a range of species and systems.
Nature's Notebook, a program of USA-NPN, is designed for both professional and citizen scientists, with standardized phenology monitoring protocols, training and education materials, and active communities of observers and researchers. Participants use mobile apps or a browser interface to submit data on over 1,000 species of plants and animals in the United States.
All phenology data collected by Nature's Notebook participants, as well as some integrated legacy datasets, are available for visualization and analysis. The USA-NPN Phenology Visualization tool supports the creation of phenology calendars and comparisons between years, species, and regions, as well as exploring relationships between phenological events and climate drivers (e.g., flowering predicted by accumulated precipitation).
The USA-NPN researcher and manager communities are developing tools and techniques to use these observations to support a wide range of decisions made routinely by citizens, managers, scientists, and others, including decisions related to ecosystems, food resources, allergies, wildfires, water, and conservation.