0 00:00:05,000 --> 00:00:06,590 Hello everyone. 2 00:00:06,590 --> 00:00:08,985 Thank you for choosing me as your final talk for today. 3 00:00:08,985 --> 00:00:09,818 (audience laughs) 4 00:00:09,818 --> 00:00:13,010 I'm extremely honored to be representing 5 00:00:13,010 --> 00:00:15,800 the Appalachian Club for one of the first, 6 00:00:15,800 --> 00:00:19,580 one of the first official capacities in my tenure with them. 7 00:00:19,580 --> 00:00:20,930 And I would like to share 8 00:00:20,930 --> 00:00:23,690 with you some preliminary findings from a 9 00:00:23,690 --> 00:00:26,210 kind of a deep dive into our 10 00:00:26,210 --> 00:00:28,340 longstanding phonology data sets. 11 00:00:28,340 --> 00:00:30,950 And I want to emphasize this is preliminary, 12 00:00:30,950 --> 00:00:32,420 so I think there's a lotta cool stuff 13 00:00:32,420 --> 00:00:33,650 that can come out of this. 14 00:00:33,650 --> 00:00:35,390 I'd be happy to talk with anyone 15 00:00:35,390 --> 00:00:38,570 after if they are curious about anything I say. 16 00:00:38,570 --> 00:00:42,200 So before I get too much further, I just want to acknowledge 17 00:00:42,200 --> 00:00:45,920 that all of the data collected here was 18 00:00:45,920 --> 00:00:47,900 brought to you by a multitude of people 19 00:00:47,900 --> 00:00:51,560 both within the AMC and volunteers, interns, 20 00:00:51,560 --> 00:00:53,000 a full number of people that 21 00:00:53,000 --> 00:00:55,073 can't really fit all onto this list. 22 00:00:56,570 --> 00:01:00,590 So the purview of the AMC is primarily 23 00:01:00,590 --> 00:01:03,803 in this interest in alpine research and conservation. 24 00:01:04,970 --> 00:01:07,910 We have done a lot of work primarily in the Whites, 25 00:01:07,910 --> 00:01:10,760 but we are, you know, broadly interested 26 00:01:10,760 --> 00:01:12,560 in alpine areas across the northeast 27 00:01:12,560 --> 00:01:13,760 and not only alpine, 28 00:01:13,760 --> 00:01:16,610 but forests that occur below tree line as well 29 00:01:16,610 --> 00:01:20,300 both along these high elevation areas 30 00:01:20,300 --> 00:01:23,153 and forests that we actively manage and work on. 31 00:01:24,350 --> 00:01:27,410 And if we zoom into Mount Washington for a second, 32 00:01:27,410 --> 00:01:29,360 this graph represents work done 33 00:01:29,360 --> 00:01:31,613 by my colleague Georgia Murray at the AMC. 34 00:01:32,630 --> 00:01:34,910 There seems to be significant warming occurring 35 00:01:34,910 --> 00:01:36,410 at Pinkham Notch at low elevation 36 00:01:36,410 --> 00:01:38,450 near the base of Mount Washington. 37 00:01:38,450 --> 00:01:41,720 And also significant warming on an annual basis, 38 00:01:41,720 --> 00:01:43,340 although not quite as dramatically 39 00:01:43,340 --> 00:01:45,410 at high elevation near the summit. 40 00:01:45,410 --> 00:01:47,180 If you zoom out for a second 41 00:01:47,180 --> 00:01:50,630 you can see sort of those similar thing going on, 42 00:01:50,630 --> 00:01:53,480 not only on an annual mean temperature basis 43 00:01:53,480 --> 00:01:55,070 but broken up by season. 44 00:01:55,070 --> 00:01:57,770 So particularly in winter and spring 45 00:01:57,770 --> 00:02:00,800 we're seeing this significant warming trend through time. 46 00:02:00,800 --> 00:02:02,780 And these data were taken from 47 00:02:02,780 --> 00:02:06,270 locations of phenological observations since 2004 48 00:02:07,310 --> 00:02:10,493 and are extracted from Daymet gridded climate data. 49 00:02:12,800 --> 00:02:16,910 So given that plants are likely to respond 50 00:02:16,910 --> 00:02:18,170 to warming in some way 51 00:02:18,170 --> 00:02:20,900 and the mountain of data which suggests that 52 00:02:20,900 --> 00:02:24,260 phenology will be impacted by warming in some way, 53 00:02:24,260 --> 00:02:26,720 the AMC has been interested in collecting phenology data 54 00:02:26,720 --> 00:02:28,520 and have been for quite a while now. 55 00:02:29,720 --> 00:02:32,660 The first flush of this effort was 56 00:02:32,660 --> 00:02:34,250 with the Mountain Watch Project 57 00:02:34,250 --> 00:02:36,980 which established permanent alpine plots in 2004 58 00:02:36,980 --> 00:02:40,370 working with within the AMC with partner groups. 59 00:02:40,370 --> 00:02:41,203 This was supplemented 60 00:02:41,203 --> 00:02:44,060 by opportunistic phenology observations by hikers 61 00:02:44,060 --> 00:02:45,230 in the White mountains 62 00:02:45,230 --> 00:02:47,270 and woodland plots at lower elevation 63 00:02:47,270 --> 00:02:49,100 were established in 2007. 64 00:02:49,100 --> 00:02:50,750 We transitioned to following 65 00:02:50,750 --> 00:02:54,380 the National Phenology Network protocols in 2014 66 00:02:54,380 --> 00:02:57,800 and which is in addition of other permanent plots. 67 00:02:57,800 --> 00:03:00,170 And more recently we've launched a couple 68 00:03:00,170 --> 00:03:03,500 of iNaturalist projects including, 69 00:03:03,500 --> 00:03:04,430 let's see if I can remember the names, 70 00:03:04,430 --> 00:03:06,230 the Northeast Alpine Flower Watch 71 00:03:06,230 --> 00:03:07,880 and the Fauna and Flora 72 00:03:07,880 --> 00:03:09,980 along the Appalachian Trail Corridor. 73 00:03:09,980 --> 00:03:11,360 And I think up to this point 74 00:03:11,360 --> 00:03:13,850 we have over 33,000 observations. 75 00:03:13,850 --> 00:03:15,650 So pretty good so far. 76 00:03:15,650 --> 00:03:17,330 And this is all opportunistic sampling. 77 00:03:17,330 --> 00:03:21,173 This is just casual citizen, citizen science derived data. 78 00:03:22,760 --> 00:03:24,740 And going a little bit into the protocol, 79 00:03:24,740 --> 00:03:27,710 we have an emphasis on flowering pheno phases, 80 00:03:27,710 --> 00:03:30,950 although we you know, obviously have a lot of information 81 00:03:30,950 --> 00:03:34,793 on vegetative pheno phases, senescence, fruiting, et cetera. 82 00:03:35,720 --> 00:03:38,000 As I said, this is a combination 83 00:03:38,000 --> 00:03:40,970 of both permanent plots and opportunistic sampling 84 00:03:40,970 --> 00:03:44,273 for both AMC staff and others, volunteers. 85 00:03:45,740 --> 00:03:49,220 And the data can be found on, in a number of places. 86 00:03:49,220 --> 00:03:50,870 We have an Access database, 87 00:03:50,870 --> 00:03:52,903 it can be found within the NPN framework and on iNaturalist. 88 00:03:54,460 --> 00:03:56,090 And I've been working pretty hard 89 00:03:56,090 --> 00:03:58,520 to synthesize all this to distill it down 90 00:03:58,520 --> 00:04:01,730 to one standardized format and automate the process. 91 00:04:01,730 --> 00:04:03,830 It's been quite difficult and time consuming, 92 00:04:03,830 --> 00:04:05,330 but I'm still working on that. 93 00:04:06,620 --> 00:04:08,420 So with this wealth of data 94 00:04:08,420 --> 00:04:10,190 we can ask some really cool ecological 95 00:04:10,190 --> 00:04:12,320 and conservation minded questions. 96 00:04:12,320 --> 00:04:15,320 And as sort of a case study for that, 97 00:04:15,320 --> 00:04:17,090 I'm thinking about this idea of 98 00:04:17,090 --> 00:04:19,880 this phenological window in the spring. 99 00:04:19,880 --> 00:04:22,160 So for those who love walking 100 00:04:22,160 --> 00:04:23,150 around the forest in the spring 101 00:04:23,150 --> 00:04:25,280 looking at all the cool spring ephemerals, 102 00:04:25,280 --> 00:04:27,170 you know that understory plants, 103 00:04:27,170 --> 00:04:30,110 ephemerals, seedlings either flower 104 00:04:30,110 --> 00:04:32,510 or leaf out much earlier than the canopy closes. 105 00:04:32,510 --> 00:04:33,830 And it's a very critical time 106 00:04:33,830 --> 00:04:36,080 for these plants because they're fixing a great deal 107 00:04:36,080 --> 00:04:38,270 of carbon that they're going to use 108 00:04:38,270 --> 00:04:40,250 throughout the year when they have this relatively 109 00:04:40,250 --> 00:04:42,140 high light condition to work with. 110 00:04:42,140 --> 00:04:44,360 We know warming is likely to advance the timing 111 00:04:44,360 --> 00:04:47,420 of both flowering and canopy leaf out. 112 00:04:47,420 --> 00:04:50,330 The rate relative to each other 113 00:04:50,330 --> 00:04:51,740 is going to matter a great deal 114 00:04:51,740 --> 00:04:54,620 for forest function in general. 115 00:04:54,620 --> 00:04:57,560 If spring flowering in the understory 116 00:04:57,560 --> 00:04:58,550 occurs at a rate that 117 00:04:58,550 --> 00:05:00,680 or advances us faster than canopy closure 118 00:05:00,680 --> 00:05:04,160 then we have this expanding window 119 00:05:04,160 --> 00:05:06,320 with more time of high 120 00:05:06,320 --> 00:05:08,690 for these understory plants to take advantage 121 00:05:08,690 --> 00:05:10,100 of this high light condition. 122 00:05:10,100 --> 00:05:13,760 However, if this time is shrinking 123 00:05:13,760 --> 00:05:16,100 that could have a great deal of impact 124 00:05:16,100 --> 00:05:21,100 on the amount of carbon being able to be fixed 125 00:05:21,170 --> 00:05:22,770 by understory plant seedlings 126 00:05:23,660 --> 00:05:26,450 and might have implications of preceding mortality 127 00:05:26,450 --> 00:05:29,660 or other things that we care about. 128 00:05:29,660 --> 00:05:31,700 So this is just one possible avenue 129 00:05:31,700 --> 00:05:36,700 of research that can be undertaken with this data set. 130 00:05:36,800 --> 00:05:40,820 And so coming at this, I developed four main research points 131 00:05:40,820 --> 00:05:43,160 or questions I wanted to address. 132 00:05:43,160 --> 00:05:45,440 The first, what are the patterns both spatial 133 00:05:45,440 --> 00:05:50,030 and temporal of understory spring flowering or leaf out? 134 00:05:50,030 --> 00:05:52,880 And again, I'll focus mostly on spring phenology here 135 00:05:52,880 --> 00:05:54,020 although we could ask questions 136 00:05:54,020 --> 00:05:56,183 of end of season phenology as well. 137 00:05:57,260 --> 00:05:58,520 What are the relationships between 138 00:05:58,520 --> 00:06:02,570 understory phenology and climate that we can expand on? 139 00:06:02,570 --> 00:06:05,150 How does understory phenology compare to canopy closure? 140 00:06:05,150 --> 00:06:07,610 This idea of the phenological window and spread 141 00:06:07,610 --> 00:06:09,380 or to alpine plant phenology, 142 00:06:09,380 --> 00:06:11,453 which is also really interesting. 143 00:06:12,320 --> 00:06:15,080 And is there any evidence for phenological advance 144 00:06:15,080 --> 00:06:18,680 of understory plants as a result of particularly warm years 145 00:06:18,680 --> 00:06:21,143 that we can tease out through our data? 146 00:06:22,280 --> 00:06:25,100 And so I broke up our plant species into the three groups. 147 00:06:25,100 --> 00:06:28,190 So we have woodland forbs, also shrubs, 148 00:06:28,190 --> 00:06:30,053 canopy trees, and alpine plants. 149 00:06:31,580 --> 00:06:34,100 The most abundant species 150 00:06:34,100 --> 00:06:35,690 for these woodland forbs and shrubs, 151 00:06:35,690 --> 00:06:38,000 there are 14 that I focus in on, 152 00:06:38,000 --> 00:06:41,210 four canopy trees, and 11 alpine plant species. 153 00:06:41,210 --> 00:06:43,100 And since I can't possibly talk about all of them 154 00:06:43,100 --> 00:06:44,960 I'll choose one representative species 155 00:06:44,960 --> 00:06:47,453 for each group to key in on. 156 00:06:49,310 --> 00:06:53,420 So this map on the left shows you observations taken 157 00:06:53,420 --> 00:06:55,940 with our Mountain Watch Project. 158 00:06:55,940 --> 00:06:57,620 There's NPN a little more restricted 159 00:06:57,620 --> 00:06:59,450 and then brace yourself, boom, 160 00:06:59,450 --> 00:07:01,940 -our iNaturalist observations. -(audience laughs) 161 00:07:01,940 --> 00:07:02,900 And as you can see 162 00:07:02,900 --> 00:07:05,360 with our citizens science derived data sets 163 00:07:05,360 --> 00:07:08,120 we greatly expand the spatial distribution 164 00:07:08,120 --> 00:07:09,740 and the amount of variation in climate 165 00:07:09,740 --> 00:07:13,190 that we can capture with this data set. 166 00:07:13,190 --> 00:07:16,130 So that has been really great for us to have. 167 00:07:16,130 --> 00:07:18,680 And I'm only showing you everything north of Mount Graylock. 168 00:07:18,680 --> 00:07:21,560 We also have observations galore 169 00:07:21,560 --> 00:07:24,290 in the Southern Appalachians as well. 170 00:07:24,290 --> 00:07:25,940 So take it all together, 171 00:07:25,940 --> 00:07:29,450 I synthesized, collated nearly 800,000 observations 172 00:07:29,450 --> 00:07:32,600 taken since 2004, which is a lot. 173 00:07:32,600 --> 00:07:35,480 And then I did a little bit of basic exploratory analysis. 174 00:07:35,480 --> 00:07:36,650 I looked at some correlations 175 00:07:36,650 --> 00:07:39,050 between the day of year of flowering or leaf out 176 00:07:40,194 --> 00:07:42,530 and different climate environmental variables. 177 00:07:42,530 --> 00:07:44,930 Calculated mean flowering time for a number of species, 178 00:07:44,930 --> 00:07:47,570 just to have that baseline information 179 00:07:47,570 --> 00:07:50,330 and then use model selection to kind of pick out 180 00:07:50,330 --> 00:07:55,130 what climate variables explained more or less variation 181 00:07:55,130 --> 00:07:57,320 in the day of year. 182 00:07:57,320 --> 00:08:00,860 And I wrapped this up with that phenological window idea 183 00:08:00,860 --> 00:08:02,750 using Bayesian regression to compare shifts 184 00:08:02,750 --> 00:08:05,183 between spring flower and that canopy closure. 185 00:08:08,900 --> 00:08:12,680 So looking at some summary results here, 186 00:08:12,680 --> 00:08:14,780 I'm showing you a median day 187 00:08:14,780 --> 00:08:17,660 of flowering for Canada Mayflower over there on the left, 188 00:08:17,660 --> 00:08:19,520 which is a woodland forb species, 189 00:08:19,520 --> 00:08:23,660 a tree species Acer rubrum, red maple over here on the top, 190 00:08:23,660 --> 00:08:25,859 and the much later flowering 191 00:08:25,859 --> 00:08:28,580 alpine plant species mountain cranberry. 192 00:08:28,580 --> 00:08:31,340 Since there was such a a huge number of observations 193 00:08:31,340 --> 00:08:34,610 these come out to pretty normally distributed, 194 00:08:34,610 --> 00:08:35,993 which is very convenient. 195 00:08:37,370 --> 00:08:39,380 Also keep in mind that this could be further broken 196 00:08:39,380 --> 00:08:41,600 down into individual years of median flowering. 197 00:08:41,600 --> 00:08:44,030 So we can see if there's a particular warm year 198 00:08:44,030 --> 00:08:47,723 that is, has a earlier median flowering time. 199 00:08:50,210 --> 00:08:52,334 Looking at my model comparison 200 00:08:52,334 --> 00:08:54,593 using multiple linear regression, 201 00:08:55,820 --> 00:08:59,090 the number of climate and environmental variables 202 00:08:59,090 --> 00:09:02,810 that came out to be relatively more important if you will, 203 00:09:02,810 --> 00:09:06,800 we've got elevation, latitude, spring snow water equivalent, 204 00:09:06,800 --> 00:09:08,060 accumulating growing degree days, 205 00:09:08,060 --> 00:09:10,640 mean winter temp that's preceding winter temp, 206 00:09:10,640 --> 00:09:12,560 which has a big influence on what happens 207 00:09:12,560 --> 00:09:14,780 in the following spring, and then mean spring temp. 208 00:09:14,780 --> 00:09:17,090 And since these two explained 209 00:09:17,090 --> 00:09:20,660 most of the variation I focused in on these two 210 00:09:20,660 --> 00:09:23,333 using more sophisticated analysis moving forward. 211 00:09:26,060 --> 00:09:28,010 And plotting some climate relationships 212 00:09:28,010 --> 00:09:30,530 between that mean spring temperature 213 00:09:30,530 --> 00:09:32,750 and day of year of either flowering or leaf out, 214 00:09:32,750 --> 00:09:35,780 we see that for our woodland forb species here that 215 00:09:35,780 --> 00:09:39,020 this negative relationship is nice and clean here 216 00:09:39,020 --> 00:09:41,270 and that pretty much breaks down 217 00:09:41,270 --> 00:09:44,060 with our alpine plant species. 218 00:09:44,060 --> 00:09:46,220 Then our tree species is somewhere in between. 219 00:09:46,220 --> 00:09:47,300 It's negative relationship 220 00:09:47,300 --> 00:09:49,880 but not a lot of variance explained. 221 00:09:49,880 --> 00:09:52,610 And I wanna stress that these are very representative 222 00:09:52,610 --> 00:09:55,670 of this, these species and these groups in general. 223 00:09:55,670 --> 00:09:58,190 Generally the woodland, 224 00:09:58,190 --> 00:10:01,820 lower elevation woodland species had this very nice clean, 225 00:10:01,820 --> 00:10:02,840 clean cut relationship, 226 00:10:02,840 --> 00:10:06,113 whereas for these others it broke down a bit. 227 00:10:08,360 --> 00:10:10,400 As I said, you could pull out median flowering time 228 00:10:10,400 --> 00:10:12,650 for individual years. 229 00:10:12,650 --> 00:10:14,480 And so if you do that with Canada mayflower 230 00:10:14,480 --> 00:10:17,813 you see this declining trend of earlier flowering. 231 00:10:19,250 --> 00:10:22,010 The color of these dots indicate 232 00:10:22,010 --> 00:10:23,210 average means spring temperature 233 00:10:23,210 --> 00:10:25,790 for the locations those observations were taken 234 00:10:25,790 --> 00:10:28,160 and you you can kinda see that also tracks 235 00:10:28,160 --> 00:10:30,110 warming through time. 236 00:10:30,110 --> 00:10:31,910 I will also just wanna say this does, 237 00:10:31,910 --> 00:10:34,400 this relationship again doesn't work as well 238 00:10:34,400 --> 00:10:36,593 for our trees and for our alpine species. 239 00:10:38,090 --> 00:10:39,660 So putting all together 240 00:10:40,970 --> 00:10:43,160 you can see that again our woodland, 241 00:10:43,160 --> 00:10:44,398 lower elevation woodland species 242 00:10:44,398 --> 00:10:46,940 has this nice relationship with mean spring temperature 243 00:10:46,940 --> 00:10:48,800 and the day of flowering. 244 00:10:48,800 --> 00:10:51,020 Alpine, again pretty weak. 245 00:10:51,020 --> 00:10:52,760 And then this interesting thing happened 246 00:10:52,760 --> 00:10:57,140 with trees where it seems that the time of canopy closure, 247 00:10:57,140 --> 00:10:59,450 the leaf out time of these tree species 248 00:10:59,450 --> 00:11:02,480 kind of went across this relationship 249 00:11:02,480 --> 00:11:04,610 with woodland understory plants, 250 00:11:04,610 --> 00:11:06,110 which made me think 251 00:11:06,110 --> 00:11:08,780 is that phenological window that I was discussing earlier, 252 00:11:08,780 --> 00:11:11,150 is that shifting depending on where you are, 253 00:11:11,150 --> 00:11:14,360 what temperature regime you're in essentially? 254 00:11:14,360 --> 00:11:18,590 So looking at that, I calculated the temperature sensitivity 255 00:11:18,590 --> 00:11:19,970 of these individual groups. 256 00:11:19,970 --> 00:11:21,860 I broke trees into either warm 257 00:11:21,860 --> 00:11:26,860 or cool areas using an 8.5 degree cutoff. 258 00:11:27,020 --> 00:11:29,210 And basically what this y-axis is telling you is 259 00:11:29,210 --> 00:11:31,850 for every degree of warming, 260 00:11:31,850 --> 00:11:34,160 how many days early your flowering is occurring 261 00:11:34,160 --> 00:11:35,480 or leaf out is occurring. 262 00:11:35,480 --> 00:11:36,740 And you can see there's really no difference 263 00:11:36,740 --> 00:11:40,730 between woodland understory plants and this warm tree group. 264 00:11:40,730 --> 00:11:43,730 I also broke this understory plants the two groups 265 00:11:43,730 --> 00:11:45,620 and they really didn't have any difference 266 00:11:45,620 --> 00:11:46,730 between the two either. 267 00:11:46,730 --> 00:11:51,500 But for this comparison between woodland plants 268 00:11:51,500 --> 00:11:54,470 and trees leafing out in cool areas 269 00:11:54,470 --> 00:11:56,930 there was this much greater sensitivity for these, 270 00:11:56,930 --> 00:11:58,910 for individuals in this group, 271 00:11:58,910 --> 00:12:02,960 which could indicate that at least in these particular areas 272 00:12:02,960 --> 00:12:05,510 which are at higher elevations and latitudes 273 00:12:05,510 --> 00:12:07,850 they could be experiencing a kind of a 274 00:12:07,850 --> 00:12:10,130 phenological window of contraction, 275 00:12:10,130 --> 00:12:12,470 which other people have seen 276 00:12:12,470 --> 00:12:15,320 and is an idea we should probably expand on. 277 00:12:15,320 --> 00:12:16,850 And again our core alpine plant species 278 00:12:16,850 --> 00:12:18,470 aren't really doing much. 279 00:12:18,470 --> 00:12:20,210 They don't seem to be very responsive 280 00:12:20,210 --> 00:12:22,313 to warmer temperatures. 281 00:12:24,860 --> 00:12:26,273 So to wrap all this up, 282 00:12:27,470 --> 00:12:29,390 I just wanna impose upon you the idea 283 00:12:29,390 --> 00:12:31,040 that multiple data streams, 284 00:12:31,040 --> 00:12:34,850 multiple data sources really enhances our spatial 285 00:12:34,850 --> 00:12:38,180 and temporal resolution of these disparate data sets. 286 00:12:38,180 --> 00:12:39,487 It was really cool to put all this together 287 00:12:39,487 --> 00:12:41,243 and see what came out. 288 00:12:42,740 --> 00:12:45,230 We now have a baseline understanding 289 00:12:45,230 --> 00:12:48,800 of median flowering times, medium leaf out times 290 00:12:48,800 --> 00:12:50,540 for multiple understory species 291 00:12:50,540 --> 00:12:53,240 and trees in this region. 292 00:12:53,240 --> 00:12:55,220 And moving forward that might be, you know, 293 00:12:55,220 --> 00:13:00,220 important to kind of compare to patterns 294 00:13:00,290 --> 00:13:02,330 that we would expect across latitude, 295 00:13:02,330 --> 00:13:05,300 at latitude and elevation were held. 296 00:13:05,300 --> 00:13:06,530 There was later flowering time 297 00:13:06,530 --> 00:13:08,333 at higher latitudes and elevations. 298 00:13:09,500 --> 00:13:11,360 Interestingly these alpine species did not 299 00:13:11,360 --> 00:13:12,590 seem to be as responsive 300 00:13:12,590 --> 00:13:14,490 or sensitive to warming as woodland species. 301 00:13:14,490 --> 00:13:17,570 And I have many ideas as to why that might be. 302 00:13:17,570 --> 00:13:18,830 I'm not gonna talk about now 303 00:13:18,830 --> 00:13:21,847 but be happy to address any questions about that 304 00:13:21,847 --> 00:13:24,230 'cause I could talk about this for a long time, 305 00:13:24,230 --> 00:13:28,043 and it's an area that we're gonna be looking into for sure. 306 00:13:29,660 --> 00:13:30,650 It also begs the question 307 00:13:30,650 --> 00:13:32,750 are there any potential alpine plant species 308 00:13:32,750 --> 00:13:34,310 that might be useful indicators 309 00:13:34,310 --> 00:13:36,530 of a shifting climate in any way? 310 00:13:36,530 --> 00:13:38,333 And there might be other, 311 00:13:39,200 --> 00:13:41,150 other climate variables we're not exploring right now 312 00:13:41,150 --> 00:13:43,730 that could explain variation in flowering 313 00:13:43,730 --> 00:13:44,993 for alpine plant species. 314 00:13:46,010 --> 00:13:47,330 Differences in spring phenology 315 00:13:47,330 --> 00:13:49,880 between various vegetation types might be important 316 00:13:49,880 --> 00:13:52,040 for things like forest regeneration. 317 00:13:52,040 --> 00:13:53,810 If you're thinking about shifting patterns 318 00:13:53,810 --> 00:13:55,820 of tree seasoning mortality for instance 319 00:13:55,820 --> 00:13:58,010 with this shifting phenological window, 320 00:13:58,010 --> 00:14:00,320 something that we could also look into. 321 00:14:00,320 --> 00:14:02,420 And like the other presenters here have said, 322 00:14:02,420 --> 00:14:05,300 there will be climate winners and losers likely, 323 00:14:05,300 --> 00:14:08,030 and it will not only depend on the traits of those species 324 00:14:08,030 --> 00:14:09,830 but where you find them in space. 325 00:14:09,830 --> 00:14:12,083 So the spatial context matters quite a lot. 326 00:14:13,610 --> 00:14:17,030 So moving on, there's a few cool areas that we're, 327 00:14:17,030 --> 00:14:17,863 that we're diving into. 328 00:14:17,863 --> 00:14:21,153 So right now I'm working up pheno cam, 329 00:14:21,153 --> 00:14:23,490 helping to work up pheno cam images 330 00:14:24,380 --> 00:14:25,550 particularly at Pinkham Notch, 331 00:14:25,550 --> 00:14:27,432 but there could be other video cam images 332 00:14:27,432 --> 00:14:29,090 that we can take from, 333 00:14:29,090 --> 00:14:33,560 and pairing that with satellite based vegetation indices 334 00:14:33,560 --> 00:14:38,180 that calculates start of spring, end of spring metrics. 335 00:14:38,180 --> 00:14:40,610 And this is using both Landsat, MODIS, 336 00:14:40,610 --> 00:14:43,400 I've even started looking at Sentinel II, 337 00:14:43,400 --> 00:14:44,420 so I think it's pretty cool. 338 00:14:44,420 --> 00:14:47,600 So this I produced two days ago. 339 00:14:47,600 --> 00:14:49,714 So it's very, very cutting edge right now. 340 00:14:49,714 --> 00:14:50,547 (audience laughs) 341 00:14:50,547 --> 00:14:53,450 So stay tuned for cool results to come with that. 342 00:14:53,450 --> 00:14:57,470 And there's going to be a session after this 343 00:14:57,470 --> 00:15:02,470 about some gaps that we have in our phenology monitoring. 344 00:15:02,600 --> 00:15:05,150 I would suggest to you that tree seedlings 345 00:15:05,150 --> 00:15:06,890 is perhaps one area where we're 346 00:15:06,890 --> 00:15:09,350 missing a lot of crucial information. 347 00:15:09,350 --> 00:15:13,010 In fact, with overstory trees you can see those red dots, 348 00:15:13,010 --> 00:15:15,503 I lack a lot of that spatial, 349 00:15:17,090 --> 00:15:19,490 that spatial variation that I had with other groups. 350 00:15:19,490 --> 00:15:23,270 So you know, trees in general, if people could just like 351 00:15:23,270 --> 00:15:25,220 you know, with their iNat platform 352 00:15:25,220 --> 00:15:27,230 just take a picture of the canopy when they're walking 353 00:15:27,230 --> 00:15:29,480 in the spring, that'd be really helpful. 354 00:15:29,480 --> 00:15:32,210 And then tree seedlings of course, which was the subject 355 00:15:32,210 --> 00:15:35,810 of my dissertation and something that I advocate for. 356 00:15:35,810 --> 00:15:37,430 So with all that 357 00:15:37,430 --> 00:15:40,172 I will take any questions and thank you for your attention. 358 00:15:40,172 --> 00:15:43,255 (audience applauds) 359 00:15:51,253 --> 00:15:53,870 [Audience Member] Thanks, that was awesome. 360 00:15:53,870 --> 00:15:55,520 I'm like a super data hungry person. 361 00:15:55,520 --> 00:15:57,733 I'm always like trying to get my hands on more data 362 00:15:57,733 --> 00:15:59,630 and I'm interested to know like 363 00:15:59,630 --> 00:16:03,260 do you get more bang for your buck with like the, 364 00:16:03,260 --> 00:16:06,600 your monitoring plots versus the iNaturalist plots? 365 00:16:06,600 --> 00:16:08,090 -Yeah. -And like how that- 366 00:16:08,090 --> 00:16:10,790 Yeah, in terms of sheer number of observations 367 00:16:10,790 --> 00:16:13,520 far more come from our permanent plots. 368 00:16:13,520 --> 00:16:16,310 -Okay. -But I will say 369 00:16:16,310 --> 00:16:19,640 having that nicely distributed data set 370 00:16:19,640 --> 00:16:21,770 in space is really handy. 371 00:16:21,770 --> 00:16:24,053 So you know, there's trade offs to both. 372 00:16:25,010 --> 00:16:28,190 We thought it was really cool to bring them both together 373 00:16:28,190 --> 00:16:29,330 to answer these questions, 374 00:16:29,330 --> 00:16:33,230 kind of taking benefits from both sides of things. 375 00:16:33,230 --> 00:16:35,690 So I advocate for doing both, but yeah. 376 00:16:38,930 --> 00:16:40,070 -Yeah. -Following up on that 377 00:16:40,070 --> 00:16:42,050 the iNaturalist, so I assume that's 378 00:16:42,050 --> 00:16:44,347 like an opportunistic thing depending on the, 379 00:16:44,347 --> 00:16:45,740 on the whatever's going out. 380 00:16:45,740 --> 00:16:47,120 -Yeah. -Do you have any sense 381 00:16:47,120 --> 00:16:49,400 of whether that there's any like bias in that, 382 00:16:49,400 --> 00:16:50,480 you know, 'cause obviously 383 00:16:50,480 --> 00:16:52,619 -it's gonna be dependent- -Oh yeah. 384 00:16:52,619 --> 00:16:54,770 -On you know, everything. -Yeah, it's a working 385 00:16:54,770 --> 00:16:56,352 assumption that it's biased. 386 00:16:56,352 --> 00:16:57,560 (audience laughs) 387 00:16:57,560 --> 00:16:58,720 I mean the reason being people go out 388 00:16:58,720 --> 00:17:00,680 in the woods and they see beautiful flowering plants 389 00:17:00,680 --> 00:17:01,850 they're gonna take a picture of that, 390 00:17:01,850 --> 00:17:04,940 not the senescing plant or the, you know, 391 00:17:04,940 --> 00:17:05,870 plant with nothing on it, 392 00:17:05,870 --> 00:17:09,140 or a seedling that's just leaves and that's not very cool. 393 00:17:09,140 --> 00:17:11,270 So yeah, there's probably an inherent bias. 394 00:17:11,270 --> 00:17:13,190 That helps us at least in the flowering pheno phase, 395 00:17:13,190 --> 00:17:16,160 but not help us for other pheno phases. 396 00:17:16,160 --> 00:17:18,590 And that definitely needs to be, you know, 397 00:17:18,590 --> 00:17:19,990 taken into account for sure. 398 00:17:21,050 --> 00:17:22,670 So yeah. 399 00:17:22,670 --> 00:17:23,690 Bob. 400 00:17:23,690 --> 00:17:25,670 [Bob] Yeah, thanks Jordan. 401 00:17:25,670 --> 00:17:28,280 You can take this as a lead into a further discussion 402 00:17:28,280 --> 00:17:30,740 of the disconnect between the alpine plants 403 00:17:30,740 --> 00:17:33,020 -and warming in the alpine. -Yeah. 404 00:17:33,020 --> 00:17:37,100 [Bob] But might a confounding factor be snow depth 405 00:17:37,100 --> 00:17:39,980 because if you get, you know, late snow, 406 00:17:39,980 --> 00:17:41,360 the plants are just gonna get a start 407 00:17:41,360 --> 00:17:43,100 that much later regardless of the temperature. 408 00:17:43,100 --> 00:17:45,440 I mean the temperature will obviously melt the snow sooner 409 00:17:45,440 --> 00:17:47,060 but if you have a big snow year, 410 00:17:47,060 --> 00:17:48,650 the plants are gonna get a late start 411 00:17:48,650 --> 00:17:50,690 regardless of what the ambient temperatures are. 412 00:17:50,690 --> 00:17:52,490 Yeah, well I'm glad you brought that up Bob, 413 00:17:52,490 --> 00:17:53,617 because we're currently... 414 00:17:53,617 --> 00:17:54,719 (audience laughs) 415 00:17:54,719 --> 00:17:57,920 -Planned -We're currently working 416 00:17:57,920 --> 00:18:00,590 within a community snow observation framework. 417 00:18:00,590 --> 00:18:01,430 So we're advocating 418 00:18:01,430 --> 00:18:04,910 for citizen science drive snow depth measurements as well 419 00:18:04,910 --> 00:18:05,780 from these areas, 420 00:18:05,780 --> 00:18:08,600 in addition to our own internal monitoring system 421 00:18:08,600 --> 00:18:11,000 where we're putting out snow stakes all over the place. 422 00:18:11,000 --> 00:18:13,790 So that is something that we're actively working on. 423 00:18:13,790 --> 00:18:17,000 I did include snow water equivalent in these models. 424 00:18:17,000 --> 00:18:18,440 It's not the same obviously, 425 00:18:18,440 --> 00:18:20,360 but it was trying to get at that. 426 00:18:20,360 --> 00:18:22,400 I suspect the complex topography 427 00:18:22,400 --> 00:18:24,229 at high elevations probably has something to do with 428 00:18:24,229 --> 00:18:25,643 the lack of response. 429 00:18:26,930 --> 00:18:27,950 I think you had one. 430 00:18:27,950 --> 00:18:29,810 [Participant] Yeah, I mean, just as a follow up on that, 431 00:18:29,810 --> 00:18:32,570 I wanted you to expand on the why for the alpine plants. 432 00:18:32,570 --> 00:18:35,210 But I was wondering if you looked at models 433 00:18:35,210 --> 00:18:36,320 just for the alpine plants 434 00:18:36,320 --> 00:18:38,060 and if the winter temperatures, 435 00:18:38,060 --> 00:18:42,050 where if that was a more important cue than warming. 436 00:18:42,050 --> 00:18:42,883 Forgot about snow, 437 00:18:42,883 --> 00:18:45,980 'cause I live in a place where I don't have lots of snow. 438 00:18:45,980 --> 00:18:47,270 But then I'm also wondering if you think 439 00:18:47,270 --> 00:18:49,800 that these plants are perhaps using photo period 440 00:18:50,750 --> 00:18:51,590 as their signal, 441 00:18:51,590 --> 00:18:54,170 because the growing season is just relatively so short 442 00:18:54,170 --> 00:18:57,598 and just spring temperatures are less reliable than- 443 00:18:57,598 --> 00:18:58,431 Yeah. 444 00:18:59,960 --> 00:19:02,690 Yeah, I agree, I agree with everything you said. 445 00:19:02,690 --> 00:19:03,920 We are interested in looking at things 446 00:19:03,920 --> 00:19:06,320 like chilling degree days and yes, 447 00:19:06,320 --> 00:19:08,270 know that, as I said 448 00:19:08,270 --> 00:19:10,490 as possible co-variants that might explain 449 00:19:10,490 --> 00:19:13,433 this lack of observed response. 450 00:19:15,110 --> 00:19:17,390 You know talking about the alpine plant species in general 451 00:19:17,390 --> 00:19:19,790 if I have an ecological theory 452 00:19:19,790 --> 00:19:21,350 and a data theory. 453 00:19:21,350 --> 00:19:24,680 One ecological, these plants are very hardy. 454 00:19:24,680 --> 00:19:26,480 They've adapted to a very harsh environment. 455 00:19:26,480 --> 00:19:29,810 So maybe a lack of change, 456 00:19:29,810 --> 00:19:32,930 a stability in flowering time is adaptive in some way. 457 00:19:32,930 --> 00:19:33,890 That's one thing. 458 00:19:33,890 --> 00:19:36,530 Two, the data, this, the climate data is extracted 459 00:19:36,530 --> 00:19:38,090 from Daymet which is relatively coarse 460 00:19:38,090 --> 00:19:40,550 as anyone has worked with it knows. 461 00:19:40,550 --> 00:19:43,730 I'm working on making fire scale temperature maps 462 00:19:43,730 --> 00:19:47,570 across small region to see if that might play a role. 463 00:19:47,570 --> 00:19:49,500 But we need a way to, you know 464 00:19:50,630 --> 00:19:54,680 have more localized fine scale, find tune data sets, 465 00:19:54,680 --> 00:19:57,230 climate data sets to really get at these questions. 466 00:19:58,820 --> 00:20:01,940 But if anyone has any ideas about how to better 467 00:20:01,940 --> 00:20:04,190 approach these questions, please let me know. 468 00:20:08,250 --> 00:20:10,132 (audience member talking faintly) 469 00:20:10,132 --> 00:20:13,215 (audience applauds)