We are excited to unveil a substantially improved learning website with a new look and more user-friendly functionality. The refreshed Observer Certification Course features a brand new suite of introductory videos on phenology. Users who complete the course earn a Certified Observer badge and a status denoting their certified status in the USA-NPN database.

We also gave the Local Phenology Leader Certification Course a major refresh and are currently in week 3 of the 10-week course. The next course is scheduled for Jan 12 - Mar 20, 2026. Learn more and sign up on the interest list to be the first to know when applications open. 

Explore the new USA-NPN Learning Site »

Learn more about the LPP Certification Course »

Work on the Nature's Notebook mobile app revamp is in high gear and the wholly redesigned app is scheduled for release next spring! We have begun testing a clickable prototype that includes the core functionality of the app and we'll continue to add features and test with our Mobile App Working Group members through the fall and winter. We are still welcoming new folks to the Participant Pool if you'd like to weigh in on app features and content! 

As well, we will open a demographic survey for current Nature's Notebook users in coming weeks. These results will serve as a baseline; we are anticipating substantial growth and increased diversity with the new app.



Nature's Notebook Participant Pool »

As The State of the Climate is a special supplement produced by the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society each year. This year, both data collected through Nature's Notebook and USA-NPN map layers are included in the section summarizing the start and end of seasonal activity of plants.



Read the report »

As the world becomes increasingly urban, it is increasingly important to maintain diverse plant communities in and around cities. Diverse plant community provides many benefits to people and wildlife inhabiting urban areas. In many cities, we have incomplete information about plant species and distributions. Researchers gathered data from published scientific papers, unpublished reports, and observations submitted to community science programs like USA-NPN’s Nature’s Notebook to see whether combining information from all these sources provided a more complete picture of urban plant biodiversity. Community science programs contributed more observations of more plant species in more diverse locations than scientific studies or reports. However, professional scientists documented a significant number of native species with limited distributions that were not observed by community scientists. In all, the study highlighted the value in combining different types of data to better characterize and manage plant communities in urban areas. 

Read the Publication Summary »

Erin Grady has been part of the Nature's Notebook mobile app revamp collaboration team over the past year and will now expand her role to serve as the USA-NPN's Engagement Coordinator! In this role, Erin will support Nature's Notebook observers, Local Phenology Programs, and researchers with their needs related to long-term phenological data collection and access to USA-NPN data and tools. She recently earned a Masters of Science in Botany from the University of Florida and currently resides in Gainesville, Florida. Erin is new to the USA-NPN, but not to the phenology community. Before her role here, Erin worked on the Phenobase project, which is an initiative to integrates USA-NPN data with phenology data from other monitoring programs and data sources including iNaturalist images and herbarium specimens. 

Meet Erin G »

Jeremy Cohen (Yale University) is proposing an organized oral session within the 2026 Ecological Society of America meeting to be held from July 26-31 2026 in Salt Lake City, Utah. This in-person oral session will be focused around the use of participatory/citizen science to make ecological inference from regional to global scales. Please get in contact with Jeremy if you would like to be a part of the session; deadline for consideration is Oct 17.

Session description:

Participatory science (or citizen science) programs, in which members of the public contribute ecological observations, have become an increasingly important data resource in ecology. Datasets from such programs can be compiled continuously over decades spanning continental to global extents, providing enormous opportunity to address big ecological questions across multiple regions, during different parts of the year, and across spatiotemporal scales. For example, these datasets have been widely used to understand biodiversity patterns, animal movement, distributional and phenological shifts, community turnover, invasions, species interactions, population declines, and much more. However, as data platforms can range from highly structured and collaborative to unstructured and contributory, there are often numerous spatial and temporal biases influencing data quality. Further, variation in the quality of observations across human observers can impact the reliability of the data. Participatory datasets can also be large and complex, making their analysis challenging. For these reasons, many researchers have been hesitant to incorporate these datasets into their research. The goal of this session is to provide examples of recent work addressing big ecological questions with participatory science data and demonstrate the usefulness of these datasets to a wide audience. 

Connect with Jeremy »

Students and early career researchers in our field are looking for some help and guidance! The International Society of Biometeorology Students and New Professionals mentorship program is designed to connect early career researchers and students with those more established in the field to provide career advice, expand professional networks, and gain insights from seasoned experts in the field.

It's a great opportunity for more experienced professionals to help the next generation of researchers learn the ins and outs of seeking jobs, research grants, graduate school positions, as well as those publishing, networking, and conferencing. Interested in sharing your experience and knowledge? Please reach out to Claire Gallacher and Peter Crank to learn more.

Learn more »

Dr. Ben Lee is seeking a motivated PhD student to start in Fall 2026 to join the Plant Ecology and Climate Change lab (PEACCH lab) in the Biology Department at East Tennessee State University (ETSU). The PEACCH lab focuses on understanding how climate change and other global change drivers like hurricane disturbance and species invasions affect forest plants, with a specific focus on ecophysiology, biotic interactions, and community diversity. The student chosen for this position will have the opportunity to work on projects involving field, greenhouse, and growth chamber studies while exploring the diverse and picturesque plant communities in southern Appalachia. There is room for project development depending on the student’s with current research foci in the lab including 1) plant-pollinator phenological mismatch and how it affects reproductive success, 2) ecophysiological and biotic interaction determinants of forest community structure and composition, and 3) trophic niche dynamics and how seed predation and dispersal by small mammals affects patterns of tree recruitment.

Learn more and apply »

The 24th International Congress of Biometeorology will be held at the University of Novi Sad, Faculty of Sciences in Serbia in the summer of 2026. The Congress will be held from July 13th to 16th in 2026 using a hybrid format, which includes both onsite presentations/posters and online presentations. More information will be available in the following period, and the active preparation of the organization will begin in the spring of 2025.

Learn more »