Student Research Reports

View Research Report

Long-term monitoring of the birch phenology in our schoolyard has shown that there are big differences in the date of rejection of the leaves of the birch from year to year. Many schools across Europe and the world, as part of the GLOBE project, follow the phenology of the birch. We searched the available information on the GLOBE web pages and we found that that are identical to our observations. We wanted to investigate the conditions in nature that are responsible for rejecting leaves in the fall. We have explored the question: when and under what conditions of air and soil the leaves are discarded and is there a significant differences in the date of rejection of the leaves of the birch on different geographic positions. Considering the research questions we have put forward a hypothesis: the temperature of the air and the ground is related to the time of rejection of the leaves of the birch. After the investigation, we have partially confirmed the same. Lack of soil temperature data has prevented us from connecting the observed phenomenon with soil temperature.