How’s your garden growing?
You aren’t the only one interested in when your redbud blooms or the red maples leaf out in your neighborhood. Scientists want feedback on the simple observations you make in your own yards, neighborhoods and parks throughout the year. Specifically, the USA National Phenology Network keeps track of the behavior of plants across the country as winter turns to spring, spring to summer, and so on. Phenology is the study of the changes in plants and animals in response to seasonal cycles. To become a volunteer observer, reporting data from your neck of the woods, visit www.usanpn.org and click on “Observe” for all the details. Once you set up an account, you can choose among 200 species to monitor. Project Budburst (www.windows.ucar.edu/citizen_science/budburst), another monitoring project under the NPN umbrella, welcomes individuals, students and educators to participate and has a more user-friendly online setup. Both sites allow you to keep up with what your neighbors, far and wide, are observing.