Become an observer at home
It's easy to become a part of the New York Phenology Network by observing a plant (or plants) in your own backyard using Nature's Notebook, created by the USA-National Phenology Network. By setting up your own site, you can join amateur and professional naturalists across the country and help to generate long-term data sets for scientific discovery and decision-making. Get started by setting up a Nature's Notebook account, where you'll have the option of adding your site to the NYPP, so that the data you collect can become part of our regional study. Then check out our list of species, and find one or many in your yard to start observing.
Become an observer with an Existing NYPP Monitoring site
The New York Phenology Project monitoring sites have different options for involvement. If you are a teacher looking to involve your students in phenology data collection, an individual wanting to observe phenology with a team at an established site, or a scientist looking to develop targeted research with existing infrastructure, please visit our monitoring sites page to determine if there is a New York Phenology Project site near you. Many monitoring sites are actively recruiting school groups and citizen scientists to become part of their network.
Become an NYPP Monitoring Site
New York Phenology monitoring sites have land and dedicated staff willing to manage a phenology trail or site. These sites interface between community members, teachers, school groups and the USA-National Phenology Network. If you think your organization or school can house a phenology trail or site, please see our Quick Start Guides and the National Phenology Network's Start a Phenology Trail resources to help get you started. Contact us to begin the process of getting set up as a node in the network!
There are many ways you can get involved...
A phenology trail, or phenology site can be built just about anywhere. Pristine hiking trails in nature reserves, abandoned city parking lots, school yards, community gardens, and backyards are all great places to build a site!
There are many levels of involvement to suit any interested observer. From tagging a few species in your yard, to contributing photos to build educational resources, to becoming a partner site in the network, you can develop a project that suits yours or your organization's mission while contributing valuable data about climate change to a national network. Below are a set of options to consider.
Bring phenology into your classroom
USA-National Phenology Network, their geographic affiliates, and educators who've worked with them have all put together amazing resources to bring phenology into the classroom. For a list of resources by type, visit the USA-NPN education page.
Our Educational Resources and Phenology Resources provide useful links for educators in all settings. A list of favorite lesson plans that we've used with visiting school groups will be coming soon.
Contribute your photos to our species profile project
We are looking for photos of the species we are targeting to help develop education and identification resources for the network. If you are photographically inclinded and would allow us to use your photos for educational purposes, please contact us for further details!
Donate to the project
We are looking for funding to help schools and partner sites get established. Community Greenways Collaborative (CGC) is managing the New York Phenology Project. Please visit CGC or contact us if you are interested in a tax deductible donation to help keep this network strong and vibrant.
Photo by Jay Diggs
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