Docents at Sedg­wick Reserve learn to iden­tify the life cycle stages of an oak. Image credit: Brian Haggerty

Nature cel­e­brates the sea­sons with unmis­tak­able changes. In Cal­i­for­nia, rhodo­den­drons add bursts of pink to coastal forests, bare buck­eye branches grow leaf buds, and great egrets gather to nest in tall trees. In autumn, quak­ing aspens turn from green to gold, toyon pro­duce bun­dles of berry­like fruits, and snow geese col­lect by the hun­dreds of thou­sands in Sacra­mento Val­ley wetlands.

Each of these events is influ­enced by cli­mate. Fac­tors such as tem­per­a­ture, rain­fall, and rates of snowmelt help dic­tate when plants set seed and but­ter­flies lay eggs but also how intense the wild­flower bloom will be.

The con­di­tion of each mon­i­tored plant is noted and later entered into a cen­tral data­base. Image credit: Kath­leen Wong

Nowa­days, observ­ing nature’s sea­sonal events is a seri­ous sci­ence. Called phe­nol­ogy, the study of recur­ring bio­log­i­cal changes and their responses to the envi­ron­ment can answer a host of press­ing eco­log­i­cal ques­tions. Chief among these: how is cli­mate change affect­ing nat­ural communities?

The answers have major impli­ca­tions for both nature and peo­ple. War­blers that migrate ear­lier than insects hatch could starve. Rodents that require colder con­di­tions could shift their ranges ups­lope. Flow­ers that bloom before bees emerge might never get pol­li­nated. Chang­ing weather pat­terns could accel­er­ate crop plant­ing and har­vest­ing, as well as allergy and fire sea­sons. Con­serv­ing par­tic­u­lar species or com­mu­ni­ties in a chang­ing cli­mate will require shifts in land man­age­ment or restora­tion practices.

To keep tabs on nat­ural sched­ules in Cal­i­for­nia, researchers at UC Santa Bar­bara have launched the Cal­i­for­nia Phe­nol­ogy Project. Led by Pro­fes­sor of Ecol­ogy and Evo­lu­tion­ary Biol­ogy Susan Mazer, grad­u­ate stu­dent Brian Hag­gerty, and post­doc­toral fel­low Eliz­a­beth Math­ews, the project is observ­ing plants at eight UC Nat­ural Reserves and seven national parks, a total of more than 100 mon­i­tor­ing sites.

The Cal­i­for­nia Phe­nol­ogy Project will mon­i­tor the dates of leaf out, flow­er­ing, fruit­ing, and sim­i­lar events for plants at eight NRS reserves. Image credit: Brian Haggerty

Sci­en­tists, docents, staff, teach­ers, and other cit­i­zen sci­en­tists are being trained to track the life stages of sev­eral selected plant species found at each site. Thirty plant species are being tar­geted statewide. The data are then sub­mit­ted online to the USA National Phe­nol­ogy Net­work, which makes phe­nol­ogy data from across the coun­try avail­able for edu­ca­tion and analy­sis. The Cal­i­for­nia project has already sub­mit­ted more than 150,000 obser­va­tions to the national data­base since 2011.

The state project began in 2010, when the National Park Ser­vice funded a pilot mon­i­tor­ing pro­gram in seven parks across the state. The UCSB sci­en­tists devel­oped pro­to­cols, selected tar­get species, devel­oped plant iden­ti­fi­ca­tion mate­ri­als, and trained peo­ple to doc­u­ment events such as flower matu­rity and fruit set.

The project expanded to the NRS in 2011 with a $32,000 Research Oppor­tu­nity Award from UC Vice Pres­i­dent for Research Steven Beck­with. Together with $8,000 in match­ing funds from the UCSB Office of Research, this fund­ing pro­vided train­ing and coor­di­na­tion efforts at eight NRS sites.

The Cal­i­for­nia Phe­nol­ogy Project will mon­i­tor plant phases at eight NRS reserves.

“The UCOP fund­ing has been absolutely crit­i­cal to this project; with­out it we would not be coor­di­nat­ing the first multi-reserve sci­ence and edu­ca­tion project in the NRS’s 47-year his­tory,” Hag­gerty says.

The project was a plus for the the NRS long before plant mon­i­tor­ing began. In order to pin­point the plant species found at each reserve, and decide which to mon­i­tor, the sci­en­tists had to com­pile a plant list for the entire NRS. The result­ing NRS flora was the first time such a list was assem­bled in one place.

Mak­ing phe­nol­ogy obser­va­tions requires close atten­tion to plant anatomy. Image credit: Brian Haggerty

The NRS arm of the study is well under­way. For exam­ple, Hag­gerty has trained 40 Sedg­wick Reserve docents in phe­no­log­i­cal mon­i­tor­ing, ten of whom have com­mit­ted to ded­i­cated weekly mon­i­tor­ing. At Valen­tine Camp and SNARL, vol­un­teers have already been col­lect­ing data through­out the summer.

“Reserve man­agers are using this project as a plat­form to engage their local com­mu­ni­ties of sci­en­tists, edu­ca­tors, vol­un­teers, and the pub­lic, help­ing to raise aware­ness of, and par­tic­i­pa­tion with, the UC NRS,” Hag­gerty says. For exam­ple, reserve direc­tor Vin­cent Vogeli of Hast­ings is using project as a core piece of his new docent program.

Hag­gerty and col­leagues are spread­ing the word about Cal­i­for­nia phe­nol­ogy mon­i­tor­ing as broadly as they can. To date, they have trained more than 600 work­shop par­tic­i­pants, writ­ten a book chap­ter and les­son plans, con­ducted a UC Exten­sion class for high school teach­ers, and sub­mit­ted an arti­cle for the Jan­u­ary 2013 issue of Madroño, the jour­nal of the Cal­i­for­nia Botan­i­cal Society

Upcom­ing pre­sen­ta­tions about the project include a lec­ture at a Cal­i­for­nia Native Plant Soci­ety meet­ing in Santa Mon­ica next Thurs­day, Dec. 11, and a phe­nol­ogy field work­shop at the NRS’s Stunt Ranch Santa Mon­ica Moun­tains Reserve Dec. 15, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Cit­i­zen sci­en­tists can learn to con­tribute to the study of cli­mate change from their own backyards.

Related Links
UC Nat­ural Reserve Sys­tem Phe­nol­ogy Net­work project descrip­tion
Phe­nol­ogy at Sedg­wick Reserve