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Oregon Season Tracker
Oregon Season Tracker is a Regional Phenology Network. Headed up by Jody Einerson, our project of Oregon State University aims to link natural resource managers, educators, researchers and others in the community to the science they use through collaborative citizen science. Oregon Season Tracker is working with researchers from OSU and HJ Andrews Experimental Foresty LTER to expand climate data and open channels of communication with the public across all of Oregon.
City:
Statewide
State:
OR
Organization Type:
Plan to Use Nature's Notebook for::
Informing management
Answering science questions
Studying climate change impacts
Getting students involved with research
Getting students outside
Engaging the public
Entrypoint for citizen science
This LPP is working with K-16 students:
Yes
More than 30 students:
Under-served Communities:
Yes
Under-served how?:
working with Title 1 schools, and partnering with other agencies to work with Latino groups
Involves indigenous communities:
This LPP is part of a Phenology Trail:
Personal Site Network:
Yes
First Observation Date:
March, 2014
Network
Partner Website:
2019 Impact Statement
Issue: Oregon Season Tracker (OST) aims to broaden discussion and understanding about climate science, linking natural resource managers, educators, researchers and others in the community to the science they use through collaborative citizen science. Volunteers contribute scientific data on precipitation and plant phenology at their home, woodland, farm, ranch or school for their own land management decisions and to share with research partners both locally and nationally.
Action: In 2019 we continued to concentrate on 1.) Reaching out to partners within Extension from previously untapped counties to train volunteers. 2.) Concentrating on supporting/retaining our volunteers through continued education opportunities and communications. 3.) Continuing work with classrooms, offering teacher professional development, OST curriculum materials, and classroom support through 4-H.
Outcome: By the end of 2019 the OST citizen scientists accounted for 189 unique registered rain gauge stations tracking precipitation with the OST program and the Community Collaborative Rain Hail & Snow Network (CoCoRaHS) national database. OST partners with the National Phenology Network (NPN) to track plant phenology observations through Nature’s Notebook.
Volunteers associated with OST partner group are submitting data from their own home sites. In 2019 we also were able to reach out to Southwest Oregon with a training in collaboration with an Extension partner - training 14 new observers from that area. In 2019 we also worked with HJ Andrews to secure a $5000. grant to support the program in schools. This allowed us to bring the first group of 50 students to the forest to tour, meet the researcher, and go out in the field and share data collection.
2019 For the first time we took 50 - 5th grade students to the Andrews forest to interact with the climate researchers. We conducted a first continuing education phenology refresher class. We conducted a training in Southwest Oregon to expand our reach. We trained 46 new citizen scientist who accounted for 33 new observation sites.
In 2019 the program received the 2018 PhenoChampion award from USA-NPN, we received OSUEA Search for Excellence award, and had the cover article in the Rural Connections; the magazine of the Western Rural Development Center Spring/Summer 2019 issue.
2018 Impact Statement
Issue: Oregon Season Tracker (OST) aims to broaden discussion and understanding about climate science, linking natural resource managers, educators, researchers and others in the community to the science they use through collaborative citizen science. Volunteers contribute scientific data on precipitation and plant phenology at their home, woodland, farm, ranch or school for their own land management decisions and to share with research partners both locally and nationally.
Action: In 2018 we strategically concentrated 1.) Reaching out to partners within Extension from previously untapped counties to train volunteers. 2.) Concentrating on supporting/retaining our volunteers through continued education opportunities and communications. This included our first volunteer/researcher learning retreat at partner HJ Andrews Experimental Forest LTER 3.) Continuing work with classrooms, offering teacher professional development, OST curriculum materials, and classroom support through 4-H.
Outcome: By the end of 2018 the OST citizen scientists accounted for 156 unique registered rain gauge stations tracking precipitation with the OST program and the Community Collaborative Rain Hail & Snow Network (CoCoRaHS) national database. OST partners with the National Phenology Network (NPN) to track plant phenology observations through Nature’s Notebook. Volunteers associated with OST partner group at Nature’s Notebook have contributed over 21, 000 phenology observation in 2018. OST Retreat evaluations showed a strong connection between researcher interactions and volunteers gaining better understanding climate science.