Print PagePatterns of phenology for plants and animals control ecosystem processes, determine land surface properties, control biosphere-atmosphere interactions, and affect food production, health, conservation, and recreation. The USA National Phenology Network (USA-NPN; www.usanpn.org), established in 2007, is a national science and monitoring initiative focused on phenology as a tool to understand how plants, animals and landscapes respond to climatic variability and change. The network is a partnership between governmental and non-governmental science and resource management agencies and organizations, the academic community, and the public working together to collect and organize phenological information to inform research, education and outreach, agriculture, tourism and recreation, human health, and natural resource conservation and management. Core functions of the National Coordinating Office (NCO) of USA-NPN are to provide a national information management system including databases, develop and implement internationally standardized phenology monitoring protocols, create partnerships for implementation, facilitate research and the development of decision support tools, and promote education and outreach activities related to phenology and climate change. This presentation will describe recently expanded capacity, and preliminary results, for the on-line integrated animal and plant monitoring program called Nature’s Notebook.
Results/Conclusions
Nature’s Notebook provides internationally standardized methods and protocols for phenological status monitoring for over 700 animal and plant species. The monitoring system facilitates collection of sampling intensity, absence data, considerable metadata (from site to observation). We recently added functionality for recording estimates of animal abundance and plant canopy development. Real-time raw data for plants (from 2009 to present) and animals (from 2010 to present), including FGDC-compliant metadata and documented methodology, are now available for download from the website. A new data exploration tool premiered in spring 2010 allows sophisticated graphical visualization of integrated phenological and meteorological data. Nature’s Notebook is supported by an advanced information management system (IMS) that includes a sophisticated data model and a system of databases. The IMS and associated interfaces support access to important historical phenology datasets, bibliographies, catalogs of other phenology monitoring efforts, and a metadata editor for description, registration and search of historical phenology datasets. New web-services facilitate the replication of the on-line interface by collaborating organizations, and provide a data input/output function for mobile applications. The network seeks to develop partnerships with other organizations interested in implementing vetted, standardized protocols for phenological or ecological monitoring.
