Dear Ecologgers, In New England, leaf out is rapidly approaching. If you're like us, you're ready for some signs of spring! We are recruiting and organizing volunteers from throughout New England to record the date that they observe leaf out in a variety of common tree species.
Observers in southern New England will likely start seeing leaf out in the next couple of weeks, and northern New England shortly after that. We ask that volunteers follow this protocol: When you start to see growth of one of the target species, please visit your trees twice a week and record the date that you first see one, or up to several, new leaves on the tree. In this study, we count a new leaf when it has emerged from the bud and its final shape is mostly visible. This observation should be made in spring when the first leaves are emerging. These young leaves often have a soft or translucent quality to them, and may not yet be green. Please do not report observations of leaves that have reached their full size. We have partnered with Jane Marsching at Massachusetts College of Art and Design and Matt Shanley to put together a user-friendly website for you to send us leaf out dates of trees in your area. To learn about the species we are observing, check out the site, http://leaf-out.fieldstation.net/ , and if you would like to participate you can submit observations through this easy form. There are also images of each species to help you with identification. That's it! Feel free to contact us if you have questions. If you are interested in expanding your observations, please read below. We look forward to seeing your observations streaming in in the coming weeks. Thanks! Sincerely, Richard Primack and Libby Ellwood Boston University Additional observation opportunities: We have been working with Project BudBurst and Nature's Notebook, national organizations that collect phenology data. If you have worked with either of these organizations in the past, or are interested in expanding the scope of your observations, we encourage you to submit your observations to them, Project BudBurst: NELOP (http://budburst.org/nelop/), or here, Nature's Notebook : NELOP (usanpn.org/nelop). However, please only submit your observations to ONE of the databases (ours, Project BudBurst, OR Nature's Notebook). Thanks!
