Phenology Walk
I participated in the phenology walk assignment on March 26, 2025.
My walk was in the earliest stage of Spring. Snow was still melting and temperatures were still freezing. The trees I examined had no signs of change since winter. They were all at the same phenophase; leafless, bud less, and with completely bare branches (aside from some dead leaves clinging on from last fall).
Afterwards, I developed my understanding of phenology by reading recent new publications from the USA National Phenology Network. A more complete picture of the timing of spring taught me about Spring predicting algorithms. They function by taking examples of phenological evidence and comparing them to the timing of previous years. The examples are taken from observations like the ones I made. The simple act of documenting the phenological stage of a few species can be used to develop powerful algorithms that can predict the coming of Spring.