Project BudBurst wants you to track nature's changes for database

One unfolding leaf at a time, from your garden or along your favorite trail, everyday observations are being sought for a database to track changes that might spring from global warming.

Are California's poppies opening earlier? Are ponderosa pine cones shedding their pollen sooner? Researchers are hoping you will tell them.

In a "citizen science" program that went nationwide in February, Project BudBurst is seeking help from anyone who spends a few minutes outdoors and is willing to spend a few more minutes on the Internet.

The vision is to build a record of how the nation blooms and ripens, across deserts, swamps, peaks and prairies.

"If we know the date when the first flower, the first leaf comes out across the country, it's really valuable," said Paul Alaback, a forest ecology professor at the University of Montana, which is one of BudBurst's organizers.

Many studies have suggested that climate change is already hastening the onset of spring, potentially changing the length of growing seasons and reshaping the ways that plants, insects and birds interact.

A big, national database should help researchers get a better handle on what might be a local blip and what is a broad trend, Alaback said.

Project BudBurst observations also could be used to improve models that predict effects of a warming climate, he said. And the data might help pinpoint problems that emerge when species dependent on a certain flower or seed suddenly find it isn't available at the usual time.

BudBurst is an offshoot of the National Phenology Network, a new attempt to revisit an old tradition. Once, amateur naturalists routinely kept logs or diaries recording the first robin of spring, the first butterfly, the emergence of fox pups or the turning of leaves.

Yet over time, such records of phenology – natural events that recur regularly – lost their luster, said Mike Dettinger, who served on the national network's executive committee.

"Phenological observations were sort of too low-tech to be a real hot topic in science for a number of years, so they've been neglected," said Dettinger, a research hydrologist for the U.S. Geological Survey in San Diego. "Now, we're recognizing that this is a very useful set of observations."

A large project in the British Isles has mapped seasonal greening with "considerable precision," Dettinger said. Other efforts focus on tracking butterflies or birds. Some phenological inquiries turn backward, searching out naturalists' diaries from the 1800s, or turning to old photos and agricultural records to document how the climate has changed over decades or centuries.

Relying on nonscientists to record what's going on around them has its drawbacks, Dettinger said. The biggest is that people can get it wrong. Someone mistakes one plant for another, or is confused about the exact location where an event was seen.

That's why with something like Project BudBurst, the more people the better. When tens of thousands of observations are being pumped into a database, the sheer mass of the correct ones will overwhelm the errors, he said.

It also helps if volunteers are trained or asked to look for something very simple, said UC Davis plant conservation biologist Mark Schwartz, who isn't associated with BudBurst but is a big fan of the citizen science movement.

"The nice thing about BudBurst is it's a relatively straightforward thing. … As a consequence it has potential for being informative," said Schwartz.

On top of the data, another payoff will come simply from getting outdoors, said Schwartz, who laments that life sometimes becomes so rushed we miss one of nature's most poignant displays: spring green.

"It just screams of new life, that sort of lighter lime green," he said. "It kind of brings joy to my heart every time I see it."

In the Sacramento area, many of the plants recommended for tracking under project BudBurst have already unfurled their first leaves, said Marilee Flannery, director of the Effie Yeaw Nature Center. But several of the wildflowers listed aren't yet in bloom at Effie Yeaw, and east into the Sierra, higher elevations are still awaiting spring.

People intrigued by BudBurst should find plenty of prospects not far from Sacramento, as well as at home, Flannery said.

"If they want to follow the melting of the snow on up the Sierra, each weekend they could make a different trip and discover what plants are budding," she said.

The project also asks for information about other events in some plants' lives, such as when a plant reaches full flower and when seeds have dispersed.

While people can monitor any species they choose for BudBurst, the recommended list focuses on just under 100 plants that are easy to identify and widely distributed across the United States.

Researchers hope the database will attract tens of thousands of contributors and grow for decades, with new participants stepping up as others drop out.

"Scientists get money for a study and they're lucky to have three or four years of funding," said Alaback of the University of Montana. With BudBurst, enough seasons can be tracked to start providing meaningful data for climate change research.

That, Alaback said, should take about 10 years – and 20 will be even better.

"The beauty of this is it's cumulative," he said. "We want lots of observers."

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