Dr. Juliana Medeiros explains the Rhododendron Phenology Monitoring Project:

 

Abstract

This exciting international project is in its second year of studying how weather and climate drive Rhododendron flowering. This is a key element of plant and pollinator conservation, as well as important information for plant breeders.

The project monitors natural populations of Rhododendron as well as well-documented plant collections.  Both species and hybrids are included, although species are the main focus.

We expect this program to continue in perpetuity, with the data being used by a variety of researchers in academic publications, as well as be openly available to any member of the public to use for their own purposes.

Can you help?

We are excited to invite all ARS members to participate in Beta Testing Phase for our Rhododendron Phenology Monitoring program. (Phenology monitoring refers to tracking the timing of important life events, like flowering.)

The monitoring consists primarily of taking a photo at a specific stage of flowering and uploading the photo along with answering a few questions to a smartphone-based application. (We will also have options for offline data collection but will prefer to move everyone to the online platform.) The online platform will accept current photos, as well as older observations. So members who have long documented the flowering dates using photos may be able to add a lot of historic data in addition to collecting new observations.

The other place we foresee ARS members could be highly valuable to the project is in confirming species and hybrid IDs. The platform we are using keeps two kinds of records: VERIFIED records that have been vetted by experts on the ID of that particular species/hybrid, making them much more valuable to researchers; and UNVERIFIED records that are submitted by anyone and do not have a strong ID, but they can be verified by community members. We would be excited to find a group of folks who would be interested to look through Rhododendron records on the platform and confirm or deny, or make suggested IDs to create verified records.

Next steps:

Read the full text of the invitation letter from Dr. Juliana Medeiros

Register your interest, and you will be sent further information based on your responses: Fill out the form for Rhododendron Phenology Training for ARS and ASA members

Click here to see the process of setting up the project in iNaturalist on your smartphone.

Click here to email Juliana if you want to attend a training session

Thanks for your time and attention, we look forward to meeting folks at the training!