Campus Walk

For my nature walk around campus, I chose to go on April 7th, a sunny but chilly day on campus. Since my date was more towards the beginning of the spring season, I didn’t expect to see much blooming. While I walked around, I noticed what I had expected. None of the trees had bloomed yet. None of them had breaking buds or flowers yet. All five of the trees happened to be in the same phenophase at the time I had gone to explore. At the time that I had gone out, however, the white oak still had a lot of its dead leaves still hanging on from the previous season, which I found interesting.

NPN Website

While exploring the NPN website, I dove a bit deeper into the article, “A more complete picture of the timing of spring.” This article described phenological patterns associated with blooming plants and when blooming seasons occur for specific trees. However, the article states that the original phenology maps they use only show the beginning of spring, and an early spring might not allude to certain inconsistencies throughout the season. Being able to have data like the data that we collected helps to show phenological inconsistencies and helps to understand the long-standing effects of climate change on local areas. Being able to understand when certain trees begin to bloom in different patterns than are usual for them will help scientists to understand how to mitigate the effects of global warming on these trees, water sources, etc. and how to adapt to these changes as well.