Using phenology as a tool for resource management and climate change adaptation

Background/Question/Methods

Changes in the timing of phenological events—such as flowering, migrations, and breeding—have been called a ‘globally coherent fingerprint of climate change impacts’ on plants and animals. Not surprisingly, phenology is now widely accepted as a robust ecological indicator of the impacts of climate change. For example, climate-induced changes in phenology have been linked to shifts in the timing of allergy seasons and cultural festivals, increases in wildfire activity and pest outbreaks, shifts in species distributions, declines in the abundance of native species, the spread of invasive species, and changes in carbon cycling in forests. The breadth of these impacts highlights the potential for phenological data and related information to inform management and policy-decisions across sectors. In this talk, we focus on using phenology as a tool for resource management and climate change adaptation.

Results/Conclusions

We specifically show how phenology monitoring can be used to facilitate the achievement of numerous natural resource management objectives. These range from conventional adaptive management and emerging climate change adaptation strategies to education and public outreach. We first do this by introducing a framework for acquiring and using phenology data at multiple spatial and temporal scales. We address the concept of ‘climate-smart’ monitoring and point out the key metrics for monitoring the ecological response to climate change. We then show how these data can be used in species vulnerability assessments and contribute to our understanding of ecological processes and carbon dynamics. In turn, we discuss how these efforts inform management planning and implementation, particularly in terms of identifying invasive species, fire, and biodiversity conservation and management actions. Finally, we highlight how a new, off-the-shelf phenology monitoring program, Nature’s Notebook, is not only operationalizing systematic data collection at protected areas across the U.S., but already is cultivating the public’s natural and climate science literacy by using a participatory citizen science approach.