OPS 1-6
MeadoWatch: A citizen science program investigating the impacts of climate change on wildflower phenology
Determining the impact of climate change on plant communities has become more pressing than ever. Phenology, the biological timing of life events like spring budburst, is closely tied to climate. Thus spring is arriving earlier as temperatures rise. In subalpine wildflower meadows, this could result in significant ecological changes because phenological responses to climate vary by wildflower species. As a result, warming may alter the composition of wildflower displays that draw visitors to national parks. Recording and demonstrating these phenological changes may play a key role in educating the public about the biological impacts of global climate change. To address this topic, we developed a citizen science program called MeadoWatch, which provides visitors to Mt. Rainier National Park the opportunity to participate in scientific research related to climate change and phenology. Mt. Rainier is an ideal location for this program due to the steep elevation gradient providing a variety of microclimates, and diverse subalpine plant communities. Volunteers monitored ten wildflowers species along a transect covering over 600m in elevation, collecting data on reproductive phenophases and their abundance over time. Our goal was to simultaneously increase awareness and interest in climate change science while establishing a sustainable long-term phenological monitoring program.
Results/Conclusions
The summer of 2013 was our first year with citizen scientists, and we recruited 48 volunteers to collect data over 78 days. We evaluated the success of the program with a follow-up survey and by comparing volunteer-collected data to data we collected in tandem. We had a low absentee rate, excellent coverage of days across the week and high quality data with few species identification errors. Volunteers reported that participating in an orientation day, frequent communication via a weekly blog and talking to us on the trail helped to create a sense of camaraderie and minimized common identification errors. Furthermore, volunteers reported feeling more connected to nature and more excited about and interested in participating in scientific research. Additionally, we gained valuable insights into the relationship between climate and phenology, finding large differences in phenology across our transect. These differences in phenology are closely linked to snow disappearance date, and different species show different characteristic phonological responses to snow melt. These findings are valuable to natural resource managers at Mt. Rainier National Park, who are key partners in our program. Our results demonstrate that citizen scientists can collect high quality data to monitor wildflower phenology for scientific and management purposes.