The team of collaborators who developed the Plant Phenology Ontology (PPO) were recently funded to develop PhenoBase, an open source, global scale knowledge base that will integrate millions of existing plant phenological observations from in situ monitoring programs like the USA-NPN and NEON, community science images contributed to iNaturalist and Budburst, and digitized herbarium specimens compiled by iDigBio and GBIF. PhenoBase expands upon earlier work to build the PPO and develop machine learning techniques to extract phenological information from images. The team is currently looking for a data scientist to contribute to the project (see below).

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Changing climate conditions may affect the timing of leaf-out among trees and forbs in different ways. A research team based at the University of Ottawa evaluated anticipated changes in leaf-out among these two groups of plants using contributed to Nature’s Notebook from 965 sites across northeastern North America. This geographically extensive set of observations revealed that understory herbs are advancing leaf-out at a greater rate than trees, especially at higher latitudes. This more rapid advancement in leaf-out could result in a longer growing season and increased carbon uptake for these plants as temperatures increase.

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Applications are invited for a Data Scientist position in the Li Lab at Louisiana State University to support the NSF-funded PhenoBase project. Major duties of this position include developing machine learning methods to extract phenological information from images, building software to integrate existing phenological records from different networks, disseminating and maintaining PhenoBase through online web portal and R/Python packages, and developing and organizing workshops and tutorials to train users to use PhenoBase and the developed machine learning methods.

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The Department of Media and Journalism Studies within the School of Communication and Culture at Aarhus University invites applications for two postdoc positions with a focus on journalism studies, environmental humanities or a combination of both. The two postdoc positions are central to the Seasonal Journalism as Vernacular Phenology project funded by the Aarhus University Research Foundation (AUFF) and led by Dr. Henrik Bødker in collaboration with Dr. Michelle Bastian (University of Edinburgh).

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NEON is hosting a monthly seminar series, with the overarching goal to build community among researchers at the intersection of ecology, environmental science, and NEON. Specifically, the series will: 

• Highlight new findings and frontiers of ecology and NEON science 
• Build a diverse and inclusive researcher community 
• Showcase and catalyze partnerships 
• Amplify resources and tools that enable cross-scale ecological research 

USA-NPN team members were excited to participate in a recent webinar that covered the history of our organizations' collaboration and opportunities that exist for data collectors and users.

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Abstracts are invited for session CL2.3, "Plant and animal phenology under the pressure of climate change" at the 2023 European Geophysical Union General Assembly, organized by Yann Vitasse, Iñaki Garcia de Cortazar-Atauri, Marie Keatley, Ellen Denny, and Hans Ressl. Deadline for submissions is Jan 10, 2023.

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Contributions are invited for the special issue “Advances in VGI and Citizen Sensing” hosted by the journal “International Journal of Digital Earth”. Topics of interest include:

• Applications, case studies and empirical research related to volunteered geographic information (VGI) in areas such as, but not limited to, smart cities, humanitarian response, navigation and mapping, security, human mobility, environmental monitoring
• Technologies and methodologies for VGI collection, processing and analysis including methods of data integration and machine learning
• The role of ontologies in characterizing and organizing VGI
• Uncertainty and data quality issues related to VGI
• The role of data from Earth Observation, e.g., aerial and satellite imagery, street level imagery, in VGI
• The role of social media as a form of VGI

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Nature is important in its own right, and provides value to the lives of all Americans. To increase our knowledge of nature in the United States and its links to global change, the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), on behalf of the United States Global Change Research Program (USGCRP), requests input from the public to help inform the framing, development, and eventual use of the first National Nature Assessment (NNA). You are invited to share your thoughts on the country's first ever National Nature Assessment.

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American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting, Dec 12-16, 2022. Chicago, IL and online.

European Geophysical Union General Assembly, Apr 23-28, 2023. Vienna, Austria and online.

International Congress of Biometeorology, May 14-17, 2023. Phoenix, AZ.

C*Sci Citizen Science Association conference, May 22-26, 2023. Phoenix, AZ.