The USA National Phenology Network: Towards an Integrative Assessment of Global Change Impacts at the National Scale

Jake F Weltzin, USA National Phenology Network, jweltzin@usgs.gov (Presenting)
Mark Losleben, USA National Phenology Network, losleben@email.arizona.edu

The USA National Phenology Network (USA-NPN) is an emerging and exciting partnership between federal agencies, the academic community, and the general public to monitor and understand the influence of seasonal cycles on the Nation’s resources. The goal of the USA-NPN (www.usanpn.org) is to establish a wall-to-wall science and monitoring initiative focused on phenology.



Phenology sets the stage for dynamics of ecosystem processes, determines land surface properties, controls biosphere-atmosphere interactions, and affects food production, health, conservation, and recreation. Phenological data and models at local to national scales have applications related to scientific research, education and outreach, as well as to stakeholders interested in agriculture, tourism and recreation, human health, and natural resource conservation and management. However, the predictive potential of phenology requires a new data resource—a national network of integrated phenological observations and the tools to access and analyze them at multiple scales.



This poster will illustrate how phenology is an emerging integrative science for assessing impacts of global change, and for increasing citizen awareness and participation in understanding environmental impacts of human activities. Further, the poster will highlight the need to develop tools and protocols for scaling of phenological data, from embedded sensors (e.g., on an individual or in a particular habitat) to individuals to patches and landscapes to regions and the globe.