Scaling Plant Phenology in Citizen Science Programs

Abstract:

In the past decade, there has been increasing interest in exploring phenology as a way to better understand how the natural world is responding to changing climates. Concurrently, there has been rapid growth in the collection and analysis of data by non-experts. So called ‘citizen scientists’ are collecting and analyzing data at unprecedented rates on a variety of topics including plant phenology.

Through the development of online programs and activities, citizen science data is being collected at spatial and temporal scales that were previously not possible. Citizen science data vastly exceeds what scientists or land managers can collect or analyze on their own. As such, it provides opportunities for scaling both in terms of data collection and analysis.

This presentation will focus on two plant phenology projects that involve citizen scientists in the data life cycle at different scales – Project BudBurst which is based on the collection of ground observations and Season Spotter which is based on the classification of remotely sensed landscape imagery. NEON’s Project BudBurst (budburst.org) is a national citizen science program focused on the collection of observations of the timing of leafing, flowering, and fruiting in hundreds of plant species. The PhenoCam Network’s Season Spotter (seasonspotter.org) engages individuals in the classification and annotation of a variety of vegetated landscape images via a new platform on Zooniverse.

Citizen Science contributions to plant phenology are proving to be an invaluable tool that can be used to both validate existing and support development of new methods to extract phenology information from remotely sensed imagery including PhenoCam and satellite sources. This presentation will compare and contrast the contribution made to the study of plant phenology at multiple scales – ground observation data of individual plants and classification and annotation of data collected through a network do automated digital cameras.