Phenology
The word phenology
is derived from the Greek word phaino meaning "to show" or "to.
appear". Phenology is a interdisciplinary branch of ecology. Its purpose
is to record the general development of plants and animals as
affected by climate and weather at a certain geographical location.
People have observed, and made use of, the seasonal recurrences
in plant and animal life long before a name existed for this
kind of data collecting, and have found rules that are useful locally,
as exemplified by an early American saying: Plant corn when
the new oak leaves are the size of squirrels’ ears. Wisconsin
Phenological Society MANUAL for Phenological Observers 2003
“Properly recorded and correctly interpreted, there is
nothing perhaps to equal the records of the dates of periodical events in
plants and animals as indices to the bioclimatic character of a place or local
area, because such events are in direct response, not to one or a few, but to
all the complex elements and factors of the environment, which no artificial
instrument, or set of instruments, yet available, will record,” A.D.
Hopkins, 1918
"Many of the events of the annual cycle recur year after
year in a regular order. A year-to-year record of this order is a record of the
rates at which solar energy flows to and through living things. They are the
arteries of the land. By tracing their responses to the sun, phenology may
eventually shed some light on that ultimate enigma, the land's inner
workings."
- Aldo Leopold, A Phenological Record for Sauk and Dane Counties, Wisconsin,
1935-1945 (1947)
Phenology Links
The National
Phenology Network
http://www.attra.org/attra-pub/phenology.html
Wisconsin
Phenological Society
A Journey North
track the coming of spring through the migration patterns of monarch
butterflies, bald eagles, robins, hummingbirds, manatees, whooping cranes -- and
other birds and mammals, the budding of plants, changing sunlight and other
natural events.
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