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. One of the core functions of the National Coordinating Office (NCO) of USA-NPN is to develop and implement internationally standardized phenology monitoring protocols for plant and animal species for the collection of data that will serve a variety of end-uses, including ecological research, decision support for land management and public health, and land product validation.
Results/Conclusions
Our integrated plant and animal phenology monitoring protocols now provide internationally standardized methods and monitoring protocols for over 700 animal and plant species, with additional species added upon request. Monitoring methods have already been designed to facilitate collection of presence/absence data for both plant and animal phenology across the nation. A new enhancement now allows for the additional collection of phenophase intensity and/or abundance. Widespread implementation of these enhanced monitoring protocols will provide a much richer data set over time and space.
