{"id":100890,"date":"2024-07-30T02:42:00","date_gmt":"2024-07-30T00:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sonnenseite.com\/?p=100890"},"modified":"2024-07-26T12:42:26","modified_gmt":"2024-07-26T10:42:26","slug":"how-a-plant-app-helps-to-identify-the-consequences-of-climate-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sonnenseite.com\/en\/environment\/how-a-plant-app-helps-to-identify-the-consequences-of-climate-change\/","title":{"rendered":"How a plant app helps to identify the consequences of climate change"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A research team led by the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) and Leipzig University has developed an algorithm that analyses observational data from the Flora Incognita app<\/a>. The novel approach described in Methods in Ecology and Evolution can be used to derive ecological patterns that could provide valuable information about the effects of climate change on plants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Plants are known to respond to seasonal changes by budding, leafing, and flowering. As climate change stands to shift these so-called phenological stages in the life cycle of plants, access to data about phenological changes \u2013 from many different locations and in different plants \u2013 can be used to draw conclusions about the actual effects of climate change. However, conducting such analyses require a large amount of data and data collection of this scale would be unthinkable without the help of citizen scientists. \u201cThe problem is that the quality of the data suffers when fewer people engage as citizen scientists and stop collecting data,\u201d says first author Karin Mora, research fellow at Leipzig University and iDiv.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mobile apps like Flora Incognita could help solve this issue. The app allows users to identify unknown wild plants within a matter of seconds. \u201cWhen I take a picture of a plant with the app, the observation is recorded with the (exact) location as well as a time stamp,\u201d explains co-author Jana W\u00e4ldchen from the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry (MPI-BGC), who developed the app with colleagues from TU Ilmenau. \u201cMillions of time-stamped plant observations from different regions have been collected by now.\u201d Although satellite data also records the phenology of entire ecosystems from above, they do not provide information about the processes taking place on the ground.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Plants show synchronised response<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

The researchers developed an algorithm that draws on almost 10 million observations of nearly 3,000 plants species identified between 2018 and 2021 in Germany by users of Flora Incognita<\/a>. The data show that each individual plant has its own cycle as to when it begins a flowering or growth phase. Furthermore, the scientists were able to show that group behaviour arises from the behaviour of individuals. From this, they were able to derive ecological patterns and investigate how these change with the seasons. For example, ecosystems by rivers differ from those in the mountains, where phenological events start later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The algorithm also accounts for the observational tendencies of Flora Incognita<\/a> users, whose data collection is far from systematic. For example, users record more observations on the weekend and in densely populated areas. \u201cOur method can automatically isolate these effects from the ecological patterns,\u201d Karin Mora explains. \u201cFewer observations don\u2019t necessarily mean that we can\u2019t record the synchronisation. Of course, there are very few observations in the middle of winter, but there are also very few plants that can be observed during that time.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is known that climate change is causing seasonal shifts \u2013 for example, spring is arriving earlier and earlier. How this affects the relationship between plants and pollinating insects and therefore potentially also food security is still being subject to further research. The new algorithm can now be used to better analyse the effects of these changes on the plant world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n