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      Standardized phenology monitoring methods to track plant and animal activity for science and resource management applications

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          Abstract

          Phenology offers critical insights into the responses of species to climate change; shifts in species’ phenologies can result in disruptions to the ecosystem processes and services upon which human livelihood depends. To better detect such shifts, scientists need long-term phenological records covering many taxa and across a broad geographic distribution. To date, phenological observation efforts across the USA have been geographically limited and have used different methods, making comparisons across sites and species difficult. To facilitate coordinated cross-site, cross-species, and geographically extensive phenological monitoring across the nation, the USA National Phenology Network has developed in situ monitoring protocols standardized across taxonomic groups and ecosystem types for terrestrial, freshwater, and marine plant and animal taxa. The protocols include elements that allow enhanced detection and description of phenological responses, including assessment of phenological “status”, or the ability to track presence–absence of a particular phenophase, as well as standards for documenting the degree to which phenological activity is expressed in terms of intensity or abundance. Data collected by this method can be integrated with historical phenology data sets, enabling the development of databases for spatial and temporal assessment of changes in status and trends of disparate organisms. To build a common, spatially, and temporally extensive multi-taxa phenological data set available for a variety of research and science applications, we encourage scientists, resources managers, and others conducting ecological monitoring or research to consider utilization of these standardized protocols for tracking the seasonal activity of plants and animals.

          Electronic supplementary material

          The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s00484-014-0789-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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          Most cited references52

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          Influences of species, latitudes and methodologies on estimates of phenological response to global warming

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            Climate change and evolution: disentangling environmental and genetic responses.

            Rapid climate change is likely to impose strong selection pressures on traits important for fitness, and therefore, microevolution in response to climate-mediated selection is potentially an important mechanism mitigating negative consequences of climate change. We reviewed the empirical evidence for recent microevolutionary responses to climate change in longitudinal studies emphasizing the following three perspectives emerging from the published data. First, although signatures of climate change are clearly visible in many ecological processes, similar examples of microevolutionary responses in literature are in fact very rare. Second, the quality of evidence for microevolutionary responses to climate change is far from satisfactory as the documented responses are often - if not typically - based on nongenetic data. We reinforce the view that it is as important to make the distinction between genetic (evolutionary) and phenotypic (includes a nongenetic, plastic component) responses clear, as it is to understand the relative roles of plasticity and genetics in adaptation to climate change. Third, in order to illustrate the difficulties and their potential ubiquity in detection of microevolution in response to natural selection, we reviewed the quantitative genetic studies on microevolutionary responses to natural selection in the context of long-term studies of vertebrates. The available evidence points to the overall conclusion that many responses perceived as adaptations to changing environmental conditions could be environmentally induced plastic responses rather than microevolutionary adaptations. Hence, clear-cut evidence indicating a significant role for evolutionary adaptation to ongoing climate warming is conspicuously scarce.
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              Rapid changes in flowering time in British plants.

              The average first flowering date of 385 British plant species has advanced by 4.5 days during the past decade compared with the previous four decades: 16% of species flowered significantly earlier in the 1990s than previously, with an average advancement of 15 days in a decade. Ten species (3%) flowered significantly later in the 1990s than previously. These data reveal the strongest biological signal yet of climatic change. Flowering is especially sensitive to the temperature in the previous month, and spring-flowering species are most responsive. However, large interspecific differences in this response will affect both the structure of plant communities and gene flow between species as climate warms. Annuals are more likely to flower early than congeneric perennials, and insect-pollinated species more than wind-pollinated ones.
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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                +1-207-4752365 , ellen@usanpn.org
                Journal
                Int J Biometeorol
                Int J Biometeorol
                International Journal of Biometeorology
                Springer Berlin Heidelberg (Berlin/Heidelberg )
                0020-7128
                1432-1254
                25 January 2014
                25 January 2014
                2014
                : 58
                : 591-601
                Affiliations
                [ ]National Coordinating Office, USA National Phenology Network, 1955 East Sixth Street, Tucson, AZ 85721 USA
                [ ]School of Natural Resources and the Environment, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721 USA
                [ ]Schoodic Education and Research Center and Acadia National Park, National Park Service, Winter Harbor, ME 04693 USA
                [ ]SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, Syracuse, NY 13210 USA
                [ ]The Wildlife Society, Bethesda, MD 20816 USA
                [ ]Department of Geography, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Milwaukee, WI 53201 USA
                [ ]U.S. Geological Survey, Southwest Biological Science Center, Tucson, AZ USA
                [ ]U.S. Geological Survey, Tucson, AZ USA
                Article
                789
                10.1007/s00484-014-0789-5
                4023011
                24458770
                b77446bf-79cf-475e-9001-8886ce08c718
                © The Author(s) 2014

                Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits any use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and the source are credited.

                History
                : 27 February 2013
                : 18 December 2013
                : 5 January 2014
                Categories
                Phenology – Milwaukee 2012
                Custom metadata
                © ISB 2014

                Atmospheric science & Climatology
                animal,climate change,methods,monitoring,phenology,plant,protocol
                Atmospheric science & Climatology
                animal, climate change, methods, monitoring, phenology, plant, protocol

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