NRC’s scientists perform a wide range of biological studies in very different parts of the country. Our survey efforts could entail looking for rare plants in Michigan, bats in Iowa, owls in California, flying squirrels in West Virginia and almost anything else (and everywhere else) in between. Working with such varied taxa in so many places is one of the best parts of our jobs (we’re geeks, what can I say?), but it can also be one of the most challenging.
Recently we were planning an aerial survey for nesting Bald Eagles in the Matanuska-Susitna (Mat-Su) Borough of Alaska, scheduled to take place this spring. Some things to consider when selecting the right time for this kind of survey are weather, visibility, and nest phenology (timing of nesting behaviors). In this case, we wanted to time our surveys as late as possible without running into the spring leaf-out. The problem we ran into was figuring out just when exactly leaves appear on trees in this part of Alaska. We spoke with locals who had a general idea of when that happens, but inter-annual variability and the realization that few of us actually know the exact date when the leaves return (do you know when leaves come back on the trees where you live?) didn’t leave us with a very precise timeframe to work with.
A couple hours on Google later and we had stumbled across the GLOBE program – a federally supported environmental education program aimed at getting school-kids involved in tracking global phenology patterns. Through this program primary and secondary school classrooms track the date of budburst and subsequent leaf growth through the spring each year. There are thousands of participating schools in 111 countries (most in the US). Scientists who’ve been participating in the program have been using the data these schools have generated since the mid-1990’s to track the effects of global climate change on the timing of spring leaf-out.
We were able to use these data to find out exactly when leaf-out begins in the spring and how quickly the leaves grow to full size. Using data from the Mat-Su Career & Technical High School and Wasilla High School, both located in the Mat-Su Borough, we were able to schedule our survey for the week before the typical leaf-out date.
Environmental education is something that’s important to all of us here at NRC. Without programs like GLOBE, many of us may not have ended up in the careers we love. Moreover, the results produced by the GLOBE program are providing professional scientists with real data that are contributing to our understanding of global phenological patterns. Through this whole process we were able to get in touch with a GLOBE Program Coordinator and researcher at the University of Alaska Fairbanks as well as a teacher in one of the classrooms whose data we used. We’re excited about the opportunity to get more involved with GLOBE, and we’re currently planning a visit to those schools in Alaska that provided us with the data we needed.
Check back later in the spring (just before leaf-out in Alaska) for an update on this project.
Check back later in the spring (just before leaf-out in Alaska) for an update on this project.
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