Wednesday April 9th
I started my phenology walk at the Aiken Center and approached Williams Hall. I found most of the trees to be in the same phenophase. There were no expanding leaves on any of the trees, and almost all of the buds remained closed and dormant. All but the last Norway Maple, which did have its buds beginning to break, and I could see the stamen branching out of the soon-to-be flowers. The White Oak was still holding on to its leaves from the fall, but only around 10-20% remained. The air still has a chill to it, the days are only starting to get longer, and the precipitation is more often snow than rain, so it makes sense that not much change is to be noted. However, I won’t try to conceal my disappointment. Spring is my favorite season. By this time, I’m used to seeing green everywhere, and pollen is so abundant that there is a yellow coating across the lake in my backyard. I really wanted to be able to start seeing some cnagr and life in these trees, but I’m hoping I can begin to note it on my own time in the next few weeks.
Springing Forward?
From this article, I learned that in recent years, scientists have been marking the start of spring and comparing it to previous years to see the trend of spring and how it has been impacted by climate change. This article, however, argues that the metrics for this, leaf and flower bloom, can be misleading, and that just because one part of spring starts early doesn’t mean everything that follows will happen earlier. This article talks about how a team of scientists used the data from Nature’s Notebook to develop models for specific species and could group them based on how they were personally impacted by climate change. It was so unique due to the use of this app to help further our knowledge of climate impacts. Even though my work felt lackluster, the data I did collect could help out another team like this one to help better understand the world around us.