Matt’s Cuppa

Hunt for wildflowers and help scientists identify evidence of climate change.

Spurred on by this post on the Planet Green website, we signed up to track down local plants and record their first leafing and budding for Project BudBurst. The project is in its second year after a very successful pilot. The value of this cross-country effort is that it collects this data in a consistent and quantitative manner that can be used by scientists.

Collecting phenological data is nothing new. One of the most famous phenologists was Henry Thoreau, author of Walden Pond. Few think of Thoreau as a great contributor to the study of global warming, but Smithsonian Magazine had a very good article which talked about exactly that.

Apparently, the dozens of journals in which Thoreau meticulously recorded his plant observations have come under the glare of the scientific spotlight recently, as have the journals of others who have carried on in Thoreau’s tracks.

The challenge to researchers is that the data from these many journals is not consistent. Plant names may differ, elevation might be recorded by some and not others, place names may be familial or even omitted. And this is where Project BudBurst comes in.

By providing a single web interface and a specific catalog of plants, data is consistent from year to year and place to place. Each place is identified with a latitude and longitude as well. New this year is the ability to save your sites for the following year, which will eventually provide trends over time for a specific user-defined site.

I may be touching on the philosophical by saying this, but so did Thoreau, so I feel justified. One of the best things about this project is that, in many ways, it traces all the way back 150 years to one man who was brave enough to do what everyone else told him was foolish– To dedicate years of his life to observing the changing nature of the things around him. Those of us who are dedicated to creating sustainability can certainly count Thoreau as one of our founding members.