HR: 16:00h
AN: B44A-01 INVITED     [Abstracts]
TI: Future Phenology: Challenges for an Integrative Environmental Science
AU: * Schwartz, M D
EM: mds@uwm.edu
AF: University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Department of Geography, PO Box 413, Milwaukee, WI 53201-0413 United States
AB: Phenology is an interdisciplinary environmental science, and as such brings together individuals from many different scientific backgrounds, but the full benefits of their combined disciplinary perspectives to enrich phenological research have yet to be realized. The last few years have seen rapid progress in the transmission of "phenological perspectives" into the mainstream of science, especially related to the needs of global change research. While other parts of phenological research are still important and need to progress, it is global change science that will stimulate, challenge, and transform the discipline of phenology most in the coming decades. In order to maximize the benefits of phenology for global change research as rapidly as possible, commitments to integrative thinking and large-scale data collection must be accelerated. First of all, the limitations of the primary forms of data collection (remote sensing derived, native species, cloned indicator species, and model output) must be accepted. None of these data sources can meet the needs of all research questions, and an "integrative approach" that combines data types provides synergistic benefits. The most needed data are traditional native and cloned plant species observations. Networks that select a small number of common plants for coordinated observation among national and global scale networks will prove the most useful. These networks should be embraced and integrated into the missions of national weather services around the world, as is now the case in many European countries. A little more than one hundred years ago, the countries of the world began to cooperate in a global-scale network of weather and climate monitoring stations. The results of this long-term investment are the considerable progress that has been made in understanding the workings of the earth's climate systems. We have a similar opportunity with phenological data--small investments in national and global-scale observation networks are crucial to global change science, and will yield an impressive return in the years ahead.
DE: 3322 Land/atmosphere interactions
DE: 1600 GLOBAL CHANGE (New category)
DE: 1610 Atmosphere (0315, 0325)
DE: 1640 Remote sensing
DE: 0315 Biosphere/atmosphere interactions
SC: Biogeosciences [B]
MN: 2004 AGU Fall Meeting