The National Phenology Database: A multi-taxa, continental-scale dataset for scientific inquiry

Background/Question/Methods

The USA National Phenology Network (USA-NPN; www.usanpn.org) serves science and society by promoting a broad understanding of plant and animal phenology and the relationships among phenological patterns and all aspects of environmental change. The National Phenology Database, maintained by the USA-NPN, is experiencing steady growth in the number of data records it houses.  The majority of the data in the database has been provided by participants in the USA-NPN national-scale, multi-taxa phenology observation program Nature’s Notebook.  Participants, including both professional scientists and volunteers, follow vetted protocols that employ phenological “status” monitoring rather than “event” monitoring:  when sampling, observers indicate the status of each phenophase (e.g., “breaking leaf buds” or “active individuals”). This approach has a number of advantages over event monitoring (including estimation of error, estimation of effort, “negative” or “absence” data, capture of multiple events and phenophase duration) and is especially well-suited for integrated multi-taxa monitoring.  Further, protocols and a user interface to facilitate the description of development or abundance data (e.g., tree canopy development, animal abundance) create a robust ecological dataset.

Results/Conclusions

As of January 2013, the 1900 active participants registered with Nature’s Notebook had contributed over 1.7 million observation records for plants and animals since.  Customizable data downloads are freely available from www.usanpn.org/results/data.  Data are accompanied by FGDC-compliant metadata, data-use and data-attribution policies, vetted and documented methodologies and protocols, and version control.  Quality assurance and quality control, and metadata associated with field observations (e.g., effort and method reporting, site and organism condition) are also documented.  Data are also available for exploration, visualization and preliminary analysis at www.usanpn.org/results/visualizations. We demonstrate several types of questions that can be addressed with this observing system and the resultant data, including spatio-temporal variation in organismal activity at both the population and community level at point to continental scales.  We also describe recent results from several activities.  Preliminary analysis indicates that plant phenology is closely tracking seasonal changes in climatological variables, with spring tree phenophases in the northeastern US clearly showing earlier activity under warmer spring conditions.  Other preliminary analyses suggest spatiotemporal patterns in phenology that relate to animal migrations, invasive species ecology and management, and species interactions; additional data-mining and exploration by interested researchers and/or resource managers will likely further demonstrate the value of these data.