As climate change inexorably changes our shorelines, weather and landscapes — drastically or catastrophically depending on what actions we take now — one Citizen Science group has initiated a monitoring program to track those. The Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow Network (CoCoRaHS), launched in Colorado in 1998 as a way to record weather in a more fine-grained way than regional weather reports can, has partnered with two other organizations to generate a visual record of land features over time as locally as possible. From their information page:
The project started out as a way to compare visual impacts of drought to the kinds of things we measure, like rainfall and stream flow. But the photos of places that are not in drought can be equally valuable, providing a frame of reference for future years and seasons. www.cocorahs.org/...
The Daily Bucket is a regular feature of the Backyard Science group. It is a place to note any observations you have made of the world around you. Rain, sun, wind...insects, birds, flowers...meteorites, rocks...seasonal changes...all are worthy additions to the bucket. Please let us know what is going on around you in a comment. Include, as close as is comfortable for you, where you are located. Each note is a record that we can refer to in the future as we try to understand the patterns that are quietly unwinding around us.
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Joining CoCoRaHS is free. Data is gathered by members using standard equipment and protocol, and stored in a database. Milly Watt and I have posted annual rainfall results we’ve collected in graph form over the past couple of years, and it’s been highly illuminating to see how varied precipitation is over small distances. This Field Photo Weekends project asks members to photograph a particular spot 3 times during the year (February, May and September).
So far this year, I’ve photographed a marsh near my home twice. Yesterday’s photo is at the top of this diary. This is what it looked like in February of this year:
We had a very wet February this year and the marsh flooded over its banks over the field and halfway up to the road. The rainy season is over and you can see the marsh is much smaller now. I had some trouble finding the spot I stood in Feb because the runoff stream filling the marsh was invisible, just a seep now through the soil.
We get big rain events occasionally in winter, too big for our ditches to handle. Data collected over the past half century shows winter storms are becoming more vigorous in the Pacific Northwest. The trend has also shown reduced precipitation in winter while it’s increased in spring. These changes are spelling trouble for snowpack in the Northwest. Given this trend I can expect to see more storms like the one that flooded our roads, ditches and marshes in February.
Changes are happening all over, and fast, with anthropogenic global warming. We need all the data we can get to help monitor and predict how our lands and lives will be affected in future.
So far, there hasn’t been a lot of participation in the Field Photo Weekends project. It might turn out to be very useful in tracking the effects of climate change on landscapes: water levels, vegetation and so on. This is a map of the photos contributed during the Feb 2016 weekend. Wouldn’t you like to add your location’s landscape to the map?
Bucketeer Milly Watt posted a comparative set of her FPW photos in a comment a couple of days ago. I hope she doesn’t mind if I repost them here. She is much better at getting the images from the same position than I am! You can see the marked changes in vegetation from late winter to late spring. Fall will show the effects of our summer drought.
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All nature observations are welcome in the comments below. Tell us what you’re seeing in your own natural neighborhood, in your part of the world.
"SPOTLIGHT ON GREEN NEWS & VIEWS" IS POSTED EVERY SATURDAY AT 5:00 PM PACIFIC TIME AND WEDNESDAY AT 3:30 ON THE DAILY KOS FRONT PAGE. IT'S A GREAT WAY TO CATCH UP ON DIARIES YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED. BE SURE TO RECOMMEND AND COMMENT IN THE DIARY. |