Project BudBurst

Has the dreary winter weather got you down? Let's plan for a fun way to celebrate spring! If you're in the U.S.**, join Project BudBurst and record your observations about the yearly stages, or phenophases, of select plants in your area. Choose from one of these 75 plants to study. You can track things like the earliest date you see leaves, flowers, or fruits and then report your data online. (** Not in the U.S.? You can still have fun predicting the timing of next spring's phenophases and recording your observations.)

Dr. Kayri Havens, Lead Botanist, and Dr. Paul Alaback, Lead Science Advisor, are keeping a Project BudBurst blog to accompany the website. I thought this blog snippet from Dr. Kay covered the objectives of Project BudBurst quite nicely:

"Thanks to all of you who are watching plants and submitting your observations! These data are helping us get a much clearer picture about how plants are responding to different climates around the U.S. This will help us predict how plants will respond to a changing climate."

At Project BudBurst, you can learn more about phenology, the science behind this study, download teaching materials about plants and plant identification guides, browse the map of recent observations, and more! And be sure to upload your plant photos to the Project BudBurst Flickr photo pool.