outdoors

On New Year's Day 35 years ago, Larry Weber was out walking when a flock of goldfinches flew over.

That's unusual, Weber thought. He made a note of it -- and he's been making similar notes for the 13,000 days since then.

That makes Weber a phe-nol-o-gist -- a person who watches and records bird migrations, insect hatches, plant blooms and other events in nature.

It's also put the retired Duluth teacher and nature author at the front of an effort to elevate the folksy field of phenology into a key tool for studying climate change.

"We want it taken seriously," said Weber, who helped organize a conference of Upper Midwest phenologists north of Duluth at Isabella, Minn., this weekend.

The first annual Northwoods Phenology Conference comes at a time when nature-watching networks are springing up nationally and the field is taking on some scientific and academic juice. Projects at Harvard University and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee are using ground-level observations to check the accuracy of satellite observations of trees.

That could lead to a more comprehensive -- read "global" -- assessment of how seasons are changing and a better understanding of how and when trees are producing or absorbing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Meanwhile, the University of Arizona, which helps coordinate a national phenology network, is advertising for a professor of "phenoclimatology."

"If I was doing this 10 years ago, no one would really take it seriously," said Andrew Richardson, a Harvard assistant biology professor who's doing a satellite/ground tree study. "It was sort of seen as more natural history. But phenology has been shown to be such a sensitive indicator of the biological effects of climate change that it's being seen as a more important field of study."

After centuries, respect

Phenology has a long tradition, going back through Henry David Thoreau and Thomas Jefferson to the Japanese who recorded observations of cherry blossoms 1,000 years ago. It's frequently confused with phrenology (with an "r"), a snake-oil-based field that purports to link skull shape to personality. But the confusion may not continue much longer.

At one end of the field, Richardson, at Harvard, is using automated cameras to supplement human observers in a climate-tracking satellite project. He calls it "a new way of doing phenology." At the other, phenologists both in academia and in back yards, including those at the Northwoods Conference, are aiming to establish repositories for data and a common language, so observers and researchers can compare consistent data.

Jim Latimer, who's been taking nature notes on his 100-mile daily mail route outside Grand Rapids since 1983 and hosts a weekly phenology radio show on KAXE-FM, said right now it's hard to tell what any phenologist means by something as apparently simple as lilac bloom.

"What is 'bud burst' and what is 'first flower'?" said Latimer, who is also a Northwoods Conference organizer. "Is the first flower when the first [floret] opens, or when the whole bloom cluster is in flower? We need definitions."

Citizen science

Mark Schwarz, a climatologist and geography professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee who is chairman of the USA National Phenology Network, noted that phenology has really gained steam in the past decade, in tandem with concern over climate change.

He advocates widespread attention to a few species across the country, which might be contrary to the pleasant, easy, Farmer's Almanac-y randomness that has characterized phenology. But even Ph.D.-equipped phenologists agree that back yard observers -- motivated not by research grants but by curiosity, a love of the outdoors and what Latimer called a tendency toward compulsive note-taking -- are becoming valuable players in climate research.

Minnesota phenologist Jim Gilbert, for example, has noted that lilacs near his home in Waconia now bloom about two weeks earlier than they did 40 years ago. Latimer has documented that the ice on a slough near his home forms 12 days later in the fall, on average, than it did 25 years ago.

Rebecca Montgomery, a University of Minnesota forest ecology professor and keynote speaker at the Northwoods gathering, describes the amateur phenologist as "an incredibly rich resource" that is helping shape climate research.

"The citizen scientists, because of their passion for collecting phenology data, have, I think, played a role in where the science has been going," she said.

But can it still be good, clean fun?

"All I am, basically, is an observer. I'm not a scientist," said Latimer, who continues to build on one of the longest active records on showy lady's slippers, the Minnesota state flower. "My hope is that someone smarter than me can take the data I've collected, compare it with other people's, and say, 'Here's what's happening.'

"I've got a degree in economics," Latimer added. "I came to it because I love it. It's a calling."

Bill McAuliffe • 612-673-7646