For my phenology walk/blog assignment, I had gone out on April 18th around 3 p.m.! It was a relatively nice day, with a strong breeze and a lot of clouds.
While observing the tagged trees, I had noticed that mostly every single tree had breaking buds and looked like they were about to be producing leaves. There was no sign of pollen directly on the buds that I could see with my eyes, but that could possibly be because it was really windy out and had rained/snowed in days prior. The trees that seemed the most ready to bloom and have leaves in upcoming weeks would have to be the red maple and sugar maple. Their buds produced a certain color and looked more “alive” compared to the others. I believe that all five trees were in the same phenophase, with the maples trailing a few steps ahead, since their buds were generally bigger and had more color.
Something that I had learned from NPN’s website that interested me would have to be “Pheno Forecasts” page, thats all about invasive pests and species invading certain regions of the country. I found out that in the Burlington area the Emerald Ash Borer forecast is likely to be showing up in 2 months or more. This is important knowledge because it helps us take control and manage our habitats better than we are now. This can be helpful to the greater Burlington area because it can help ecologists everywhere learn how to prepare for potential damage to the trees around.