Print PageNatural resource managers at the state level are faced with the responsibility of preparing for climate change impacts on the landscape. Many states have directives at either the state or agency level to conduct vulnerability assessments and develop adaptation strategies. In many of those states, public support runs high. However, in some states, like Texas, neither statewide nor agency-specific requirements to plan for climate change exist, nor is the public demanding action. This places the burden of assessment and planning on resource managers without providing the support necessary to get the job done. Moreover, to garner support for climate change planning, resource managers need locality-specific trend data to demonstrate the reality of climate change within their state borders to a sometimes skeptical public. Because climate change is a relatively new concern for natural resource managers, biologists have not been collecting long-term data with the intent of analyzing climate change impacts. In Texas, we have a dearth of species-specific data that can be analyzed for the fingerprint of climate change. However, in some instances long-term monitoring data do exist because of mandates to track threatened and endangered species. We have been surveying endangered plants like Texas wild-rice (Zizania texana) and Texas snowbells (Styrax platanifolius subsp. Texanus) over a long period of time and, in these cases, it is possible to tease out phenological behavior as a window into climate change impacts.
Results/Conclusions
Documenting phenological trends at the local level provides a scientific basis for assessing future ecosystem vulnerability and initiating the conversation on adaptation planning. It serves to help educate the public by demonstrating on-the-ground consequences of climate change in people’s own backyards. Texas is home to knowledgeable and motivated communities organized through the Texas Master Naturalists Program and Native Plant Society of Texas chapters. These individuals will be critical to collecting future plant phenology data in a state as large and diverse as Texas with limited state government resources. Texas Parks and Wildlife Department and partners such as the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center have a history of implementing successful citizen science programs. We are encouraging involvement in the National Phenology Network as a means of collecting phenology data, which will be critical to resource managers who will be responsible for adjusting conservation strategies as climate changes. Without data describing how the landscape is changing, we will be unable to adequately respond to this emerging threat.
