A network of New York-based academies started out to compile information about the state’s climate and seasons almost 200 years ago. The principals, teachers, and even a few students of the schools kept track of temperature measurements and observations, such as when the robins were first seen, when the red maples bloomed, when the strawberries ripened, and when the wheat harvest started. They also had thermometers, rain gauges, and instructions for data collection.
Farmers at the time used the information to determine the ideal time to sow their crops by using it to better understand the geographic and annual variance in the growing season. Two hundred years later, a Portland State alumnus is using the same statistics to explain how urbanization and climate change affect the nature of our seasons.
The historical dataset was compared with findings from a contemporary network that similarly collected data across New York State from 2009 to 2017 under the direction of Kerissa Fuccillo Battle, Ph.D., ’18. This spring, the Journal of Ecology published the group’s findings analyzing changes in plant phenology, including early leaf out and flowering between time periods.
“This study really resets the clock for biological response to climate change in North America,” Battle said. “The dataset provides phenology and temperature data that extend further back in time than any previously known dataset for the region, extending to years prior to or at the beginning of recent human-caused climate change.”
In line with a rising trend in January to April temperatures, Battle and her co-researchers discovered that the majority of the 36 trees, shrubs, and forbs in the analyzable dataset flowered and leafed out sooner in contemporary years than in the early to the mid-19th century.
Plants in the modern era flowered 10.5 days earlier on average and began to leaf out 19 days earlier. In general, urban plants evolved faster than their rural equivalents, while insect-pollinated trees evolved faster than wind-pollinated trees.
Early-season plants, especially trees, have the highest rates of temperature sensitivity and fluctuation between time periods for flowering. The most advanced leaf-out timing modifications are those that apply to urban trees and bushes.
Having a baseline now in the face of such rapid change is really critical. The comparative dataset allows us to really see the trajectory in a way that we wouldn’t if we didn’t have the past to look at. We wouldn’t really know what that baseline was, how steep the curve is in terms of how the species is shifting, how sensitive it is, and what we can expect.
Kerissa Fuccillo Battle
According to Battle, the expedited timing puts some species’ survival at jeopardy. One of the most important early-season food sources for native bee pollinators is red maple, for instance. The bees that emerge and depend on that food source will be harmed if the red maple leaf emerges too early and those blossoms freeze.
Then, for the species that depend on those bees and so forth, the cycle continues. According to Battle, knowing which species are more phenologically sensitive can aid in conservation and management efforts.
“Having a baseline now in the face of such rapid change is really critical,” she said. “The comparative dataset allows us to really see the trajectory in a way that we wouldn’t if we didn’t have the past to look at. We wouldn’t really know what that baseline was, how steep the curve is in terms of how the species is shifting, how sensitive it is, and what we can expect.”
According to Battle, the utilization of citizen and community scientists has allowed for the collection of many more data points across a large geographic area than would be possible with solely trained scientists in the past and present.
And you don’t need a lot of training to be good at it, as she discovered while directing phenology work with PSU students and other volunteer observers. Battle could never have imagined finding the historical dataset, but it all began with a natural history book.
Academies reported their findings to the New York State Board of Regents every year from around 1826 to 1863, who then compiled them in their annual report. A volume in the Natural History of New York series included some of the early material.
Conrad Vispo, a wildlife ecologist and natural history lover who had acquired a library of books over the years, discovered the data in 2014 and started to trace the trail of the Regents’ reports.
“I started to dig into it thinking, ‘Oh there’s something in here that could be interesting,’ not realizing how many observations there were,” he said.
In order to make the dataset accessible to the general public, Vispo worked with his coworkers at the Hawthorne Valley Farmscape Ecology Initiative, a small research, and outreach program in Columbia County, New York.
In order to collaborate on examining how the historical information may be matched with more contemporary records for research, he then contacted Battle, whose nonprofit Community Greenways Collaborative oversees the New York Phenology Project.
Battle founded the New York Phenology Project in 2012, and it works with volunteer citizen scientists to gather information on the timing of seasonal changes in plants and pollinators in a manner similar to how the academies did.
“This paper is a testament to people who are engaged right now in citizen science not being able to know the full reach of their efforts,” said Anna Duhon, the cultural research and outreach coordinator at the Hawthorne Valley Farmscape Ecology Program.
“Those people in the 1800s who were out there looking at those apple blossoms and dutifully recording it down had no idea that we would have the new relevance that came with climate change and the new need for that data to have a place comparatively with the citizen science data work that we’re collecting now on phenology.”
According to Vispo, the datasets and ongoing citizen science initiatives provide a lighthearted method to engage people to consider climate change.
“You’re doing something that gets people engaged with the environment that you’re trying to encourage them to save.”
In addition to Battle, Duhon, and Vispo, the study’s co-authors include: Theresa Crimmins, director for the USA National Phenology Network; Lilas Armstrong-Davies with the Community Greenways Collaborative; Catherine de Rivera, a professor of environmental science and management at PSU and Battle’s Ph.D. advisor; and Todd Rosenstiel, a biology professor at PSU who served on Battle’s Ph.D. committee.
