365Caws is now in its 14th year of publication, and was originally intended to end after 365 days. It has sometimes been difficult for me to find new material, particularly during the winter months, but now as I enter my own twilight years, I cannot guarantee that I will be able to provide daily posts. It is my hope that along the way I may have inspired someone to a greater curiosity about the natural world. If so, I can rest, content in the knowledge that my work here has been done.
Tuesday, August 16, 2016
MeadoWatch
Day 308 (bonus edition): So what is this "MeadoWatch" thing I was talking about in my earlier post? Well, it's a program developed at the University of Washington to study the response of plants to climate change, particularly in the subalpine meadows where such changes will be most keenly felt. Participants in the program hike along specific transects, stopping at predetermined waypoints where they record the phenological phases of ten focal plant species. Ideally, the program will have up to three individual volunteers or groups of volunteers hiking each transect every day throughout the growth period to limit the error factor inherent in any research involving observation. The broad section of data gathered in this manner is then correlated in such a fashion that patterns can be tracked. Are the flowers earlier at a certain altitude this year than last year? Did snowpack persist later into the season? Are flowers blooming before or after the pollinators for their species arrive? MeadoWatch aids researchers by acquiring hard data from citizen scientists who have more time to spend in the field.
Labels:
citizen science,
MeadoWatch,
MORA,
Paradise,
Reflection Lake transect,
wildflowers
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