Climate Witness - a dispersed, national observer network for NRM phenology

Citation

Land & Water Australia. 2009. Climate Witness - a dispersed, national observer network for NRM phenology. [Online] (Updated June 24th, 2009)
Available at: http://lwa.gov.au/node/2930 [Accessed Tuesday 26th of April 2011 12:51:19 PM ].

Citizens observing and sharing ecological information can provide vast amounts of actionable information for NRM when twinned with a well designed information aggregation and analysis system.

This project will create a national dispersed observer network to monitor national trends and patterns in species behaviour and phenology that are vital to the understanding of primary productivity and NRM. Furthermore the self organising observation networks make meaningful contributions to community and capacity outcomes in natural resource management.

Building on international experience in participatory processes that have successfully generated major scientific understanding and the successes of the

Australian Bird Atlas
Frogwatch
Salt watch
Streamwatch and

working alongside other Earthwatch projects, Bureau of Meteorology and the Gould League activities will help this project establish the collection of useful real-time phenological data from right across Australia.

Project Objectives

test collection and analytical methods suited to ensuring that dispersed and participatory processes deliver high quality and meaningful data;
develop a web based platform to aggregate data, encourage citizen participation and raise societal awareness of important NRM issues
generate detailed and long term datasets on the timing and variation of key biotic events and their responses to climatic conditions
integrate a dispersed observer network with the latest relevant information technology to facilitate contributor feedback, efficient data capture and automated analyses
provide a basis for systematic approaches to long term ecological monitoring
understand opportunities for greater use of credible citizen science techniques
establish an Australian phenology network which aims to become the equivalent to the UK phenology network.