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Student Phenology Campaign Cherry Ukraine 2016

Jun 29, 2016

In 2016 GLOBE Ukraine conducted a second Student Phenology Campaign “Cherry Ukraine 2016”. The aim of the campaign is to engage students in investigation of vegetation cycles of wild cherry (Prunus cerasus) and Nanking cherry (Prunus tomentosa) and to encourage to learn more about the environment.

This year the campaign gathered 448 students and 60 teachers from 60 educational institutions of 17 regions of Ukraine. The observation lasted from April first to May 20. According to GLOBE protocols students observed budburst and measured the length of the leave twice a week. At the same time they collected data about solar noon air temperatures every day. Finally, students and teachers entered data to the GLOBE website. The campaign had several stages:

March 29 the first opening webinar was held. The teachers had the opportunity to learn about GLOBE methods and procedures. After the webinar teachers had to complete two home tasks and in the end become a trained GLOBE teacher.
April 1 – the beginning of the campaign. The students participated in the small action “Who is first?” where they had to photograph and send pictures of the first opening cherry buds..
May 16-20 – ending of the campaign and summarizing resilts.
May 23 – concluding webinar where teachers and students had the opportunity to share their results, learn more about the vegetation cycles of cherry from the leading expert in horticulture, head of the Horticulture Department at National Ecology and Nature Center Petro Mazur.

After analyzing all the data from the reports we can conclude that the most cherry buds opened during the period of April 1-11 which is almost a week earlier compared to last year (Fig. 1).

Figure 1

Mass budburst started when the average air temperatures rose above 10° C. The biggest number of buds opened on April 8 when the average daytime temperature was about 22° C.

For Prunus tomentosa most buds opened from 1 to 9 April. With just ten objects that were observed we can conclude that Prunus tomentosa ismore sensitive to temperature changes. Like last year, many leaves and branches have been lost due to low temperature. Cherry is not a native plant, because of its growing cycle is not at all adapted to our climatic conditions.

On analyzing all the data from 17 regions of Ukraine we could not identify patterns between geographical location and time of budburst. The budburst of observed cherry trees depends greatly on temperature, particular variety of the specie and local conditions.

Many participants noted that this year the buds developed faster than last year due to the fairly warm April. According to NASA April 2016 was the hottest month globally for the entire history of observations (since 1880). Campaign "Cherry Ukraine" is important not only because we collect data that can help scientists to build a possible climate models, but also to raise awareness of the younger generation about climate change and its consequences for flora, fauna and humanity.