Tracking the arrival of spring
Richard Gleeson
Northern News Services
Yellowknife (Jun 01/01) - Northerners are joining a nation-wide initiative that uses nature to track climate change.
Plantwatch tracks the bloom dates of species of plants that are more sensitive to temperature than light.
Monitoring the 10 native species included in the program is done by volunteers.
NWT Plantwatch co-ordinator Jen Morin said participating is as easy as identifying and observing plantwatch species around home or work a few times each week.
The Plantwatch program was started in 1995 by Elisabeth Beaubien of the University of Alberta. Today, observers record bloom dates in every province.
If any records were kept on the blooming dates of Northern plants, it has not yet been discovered.
"They may be looming out there," Morin said. Missionaries and other early European arrivals may have kept records, she said, but none have been discovered.
Morin said there is little known information about bloom times in the North, which is more affected by climate change than the south.
On the east coast, on the other hand, records have been kept for more than a century.
"They've found the bloom is occurring two weeks earlier than they did in the 1890s and early 1900s," Morin said.
Plantwatch volunteers record two dates for each species they observe: when the flowers on the plant first start to bloom and the date the flowers are fully open.
The dates and names of the species are entered on the Plantwatch Web site or mailed to NWT Plantwatch.
