Phenology is integral to ecological processes but its role as a driver and regulator of ecosystems structure and functioning is poorly understood. Critical questions include how environmental factors affect the phenology of different species and species interactions, and how these factors vary in importance on different spatial and temporal scales. With sufficient observations and understanding, phenology can be used as a predictor of important ecological processes at local to global scales, and can drive a variety of ecological forecast models with both scientific and practical applications.  

Results/Conclusions

The USA National Phenology Network (USA-NPN) is currently developing a national volunteer-based plant and animal phenology monitoring program. Efforts are also underway to discover and integrate legacy data sets, including historic lilac phenology data and migratory bird arrival dates.  These rich data sets provide the foundation for the USA-NPN’s collaborative work on data integration. One such project is developing real-time models of juniper pollen release and concentration based on weather data and satellite information, verified by on-the-ground observations. Another seeks to model bird and plant phenology data with climate and satellite-derived predictors. Future directions include the creation of web services, visualization of contemporary and legacy data alongside climate and satellite data streams and improvement of tools for contemporary and historic data entry, download and visualization.