Preparing our citizen science skills for spring

At a training for a new citizen science initiative in Mount Auburn cemetery, Conservation and Sustainability Manager Paul Kwiatkowski, defined phenology as "the study of life cycles of plants and animals and their relationship to weather and climate." Our goal, which should be important to not only the scientific community and the Mount Auburn community, but all humans, is to observe the cyclical back-and-forth influences of habitat upon wildlife, and see how the timing of changes in trees and the ranges of communities shift in response to climate change.

Coming off the warmest year ever recorded (by 0.25 degrees C), we're all chomping at the bit to get out there, to SEE what the trees are thinking about all this. Today, Leap Day, the last day of February, the high temperature was 64 degrees in Boston. We walked our data trail, finding the "merlot" markers indicating the tree specimens we would be studying, and peered through binoculars up, up at the buds of the red oaks, sugar maples, and gingkos, whose branches were too high to inspect closely with fingers and eyes. The rays of sunlight warmed our backs and at times caused us to shade our eyes. Spring felt impossibly near. We didn't see any "buds bursting", the first phenology stage we would be looking to record on our data sheets, but you could almost feel their energy brimming in those bulging tips.

We gathered cuttings of branches: paper birch, silver maple, maidenhair tree, observing the various shapes and sizes and colors of their buds. We made them into bouquets of twigs to bring home and put in vases with water. According to Brooks Mathewson, the ecologist who shared slides of his observations of birds responding to the timing of insect emergence (who respond to the first unfurlings of leaves), we can watch our branch bouquets bud-break, bloom, and leaf-out in our own kitchens.

We were a small battle contingent of climate crusaders. We were on the hunt for signs of spring. Though we were loving this weather, we know that no one knows what will happen as the Earth continues to warm at this rate. But we will be there, establishing our baseline, to help find out and sound the alarm as soon as the trees tell us the story.