Attention Citizen Scientists! Volunteers Needed to Track Signs of Climate Change

Want to get outside and help researchers track seasonal signs of climate change? The USA-National Phenology Network (USA-NPN), a consortium of government, academic and citizen-scientists, is launching a new program that will use volunteer observations of flowering, fruiting and other seasonal events to track the effects of climate change on the Earth’s life-support systems.

From the USA-NPN press release:

“This program is designed for people interested in participating in climate change science, not just reading about it,” said USA-NPN Executive Director and U.S. Geological Survey scientist Jake Weltzin. “We encourage everyone to visit the USA National Phenology Network Web site and then go outside and observe the marvelous cycles of plant and animal life.”

Phenology is the study of the seasonal cycles of plant and animals, such as plants sprouting, flowering and fruiting, and animals reproducing, migrating and hibernating. Changes in these patterns, caused by climate change or other factors, can significantly affect human economies and health. In some areas, such changes have already imperiled species, such as in the disappearance of some wildflowers from near Walden Pond, home of the famed 19th-century naturalist Henry David Thoreau.

The USA-NPN monitoring program harnesses the power of people and the Internet to vastly increase the data available to scientists and the public alike, Weltzin said. The program provides easy-to-use methods to track the life cycles of nearly 200 species of plants, and will begin monitoring animals next year.

Learn more about this program via a podcast by the U.S. Geological Survey, ‘Help Us Keep an Eye on Climate Change’.

Getting outdoors, enjoying nature and helping the fight against global warming all at the same time? You can’t beat that. Visit the USA National Phenology Network website to get all the details on how you can participate and share your data.

Link [USA-NPN] + [Corecast]
Photo credit: Flickr user Jesse.millan

Climate Change Destroying Walden Pond Flowers

Climate change is causing species of flowers found at Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts to die off, according to Harvard biologists. Walden Pond was made famous by writer and philosopher Henry David Thoreau, who lived on its shores for two years and wrote about it in his book Walden.

The biologists at Harvard are comparing their recent observations with data recorded by Henry David Thoreau more than a century and a half ago. Their reports in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences show that more than a quarter of Walden’s plant species have already died off and an additional 36 percent are in ‘imminent danger’.

From Wired:

“It had been thought that climate change would result in uniform shifts across plant species, but our work shows that plant species do not respond to climate change uniformly or randomly,” said co-author Charles Davis, a biologist at Harvard, in a release.

The Walden study shows that even small changes in temperature can have outsized impacts on plants that are evolutionarily adapted to fulfill ecological niches. Together with changes seen in other locations, like the unprecedented pine beetle damage in the West, the new work suggests that finely tuned biological systems are having a difficult time keeping up with the rapid pace of human-induced climate change.

The average temperature at Walden Pond has risen by more than 4 degrees over the last century due to global warming, and scientists are surprised to find that while some species of plants can’t adapt to the changes, others have fared significantly better. The scientists’ ability to measure the changes that have occurred at Walden Pond is rare because very little pre-Industrial data exists. Thanks, Thoreau.

It’s scary how fast things are happening, isn’t it? And yet, there are still so many people out there that can’t see the forest for the trees.

Link [Wired]
Photo credit: Roberta Rood

Pollution is a Bitch: Flowers Losing Their Scent, Bees Losing Their Way

A rose by any other name smells as sweet as umm… well… not much.

A new study suggests that flowers are actually losing their aroma due to pollution from automobiles and power plants. Some are also guessing that this finding might explain why bees are dwindling in numbers in some areas of the world.

Researchers at the University of Virginia have been studying how the scents of flowers travel in the wind, finding that the scent molecules bond with pollutants such as ozone. The result: floral aromas are destroyed. Pollution is actually chemically altering flowers.

“The scent molecules produced by flowers in a less polluted environment, such as in the 1800s, could travel for roughly 1,000 to 1,200 meters [3,300 to 4,000 feet]; but in today’s polluted environment downwind of major cities, they may travel only 200 to 300 meters [650 to 980 feet],” said study team member Jose D. Fuentes.

This means more than a lack of au naturel floral scents for us humans to enjoy. It could also have potentially disastrous fallout in the natural world. Bees depend on scent while seeking flowers out. If they can’t find the flowers, they can’t pollinate them – and guess what that means? Not just a decline in bee population. Bees are significant pollinators of many agriculture crops and native plants. The effects of flowers losing their scent could mean problems with food sources the world over. Scary indeed – do you need any more reasons to cut your carbon emissions?!

This news seems to provide a grim window into a sci-fi future that could have come from the mind of a literary great: one in which food has lost its flavor, and nature has lost its color. Sure, 1984 is my favorite novel and I’m known for gloom-and-doom paranoia, but is it not getting more and more likely?

Link [LiveScience]

Photo: Flickr user zaphodsotherhead