The woodland trust has turned an ancient hobby recording seasonal events into a massively popular online project examining climate change.

There are thousands of them watching, taking notes. From Cornwall's tip to Scotland's remote wilds, country dwellers, city-bound commuters, academics, suburban housewives, even the housebound number among them.  

They are volunteer phenologists, noting the arrival of a winter tree's early buds or the sound of the first cuckoo. Chroniclers of our seasonal revolutions, they record the dates that frogs spawn, leaves brown or summer birds depart. 

The fruits of their labour are on vivid display at the phenology website (www.phenology.org.uk), the nerve centre of the project. Here, the raw data they enter is transformed instantly into maps showing the march of the seasons across the UK, spring advancing north or autumn retreating south.  

Officially known as the UK Phenology Project, its aim is to gather a precious store of information about our climate and the effects climate change will have on our gardens, our farmland, our wilderness and even our world.  

A dedicated few enthusiasts have been gathering this kind of data for decades, keepers of a flame that had been kept alight for more than two hundred years since Britain's pioneering phenologist Robert Marsham first began recording the 'Indications of Spring' in 1736.  

Official recording of this data ceased in 1948, however, and was not revived until Marsham's modern-day counterpart, biologist Tim Sparks from the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology in Cambridge, realised there was a value in gathering it again.  

But whereas Marsham and his fellow enthusiasts gathered data that sat uncompiled in notebooks for months or years, his modern-day compatriots - more than 20,000 of them - log their information live online.

The project, winner of Interforum's E-commerce award for the voluntary sector in 2002, was originated and created by the Woodland Trust, which jumped at the chance to help Sparks out.  

NETWORK OF PHRENOLOGISTS  

The Trust initially saw the project as a way to reach its members, giving them an activity they could take part in, explains the Phenology project's director Jill Attenborough. Interest in the website rapidly outstripped expectations, however, and by the end of the first season about 10,000 recorders had registered.  

It was soon clear the Trust had managed to reach far beyond its membership base, says Attenborough. "Two and half years on, we are at 21,500 people. We've now got recorders right from the Shetlands to the Scilly Isles."  

Anyone can take part and make a meaningful contribution to the data gathered, she says. "There's always something for someone to see. Even in an inner city there are street trees, bumblebees, birds and butterflies. In fact our first blackberry this year was recorded in Battersea by someone on their way to ASDA."  

There's an important scientific purpose to such seemingly minor observations. Logging the appearance of our flora and fauna and comparing it to the temperature at the time reveals some important correlations, says Attenborough.  

"Plants and animals primarily respond to temperature, so when we've got a good long data set we can begin to compare the timings we've recorded with earlier years and see how wildlife has responded as temperature changes."  

Analysis and research into these trends will help the Trust plan effective conservation methods for those species affected, she says. "It should allow us to begin to do more to plan for conservation in the future and understand more about which species might be winners, which might be losers and which habitats might be under threat."  

It's vital work to the Woodland Trust which sees climate change as the single biggest threat to the habitats it protects. "Ancient woodland is a bit like the rainforest if you like. It has got more rare and threatened species than any other habitat in the UK," says Attenborough.  

"As temperatures rise, some species are going to have to move north to be in a climate they can survive in, yet a lot of those species are immobile. They might be lichens or flightless beetles that move very slowly."  

TRACKING THE IMPACT OF CLIMATIC CHANGES  

The effects of temperature on the complex interdependence of ecosystems can be profound. Insects are responding faster than plants or other animals, while birds seem to be slower to respond.  

"We know that birds time the arrival of their chicks to coincide with the peak of food sources like caterpillars," says Attenborough. "If caterpillars emerge earlier and birds can't respond as fast, then we've got the danger of things getting out of sync."  

Spring is already happening on average two to three weeks earlier than it would have 30 years ago. Such change looks certain to continue over the next 20-50 years, says Attenborough. "The worst case scenario is for five to six degrees change and the lowest is something like two degrees.  

"What we've seen from phenology is that events will happen six to eight days earlier for every degree of change in temperature, so you are talking about quite significant changes in the way that plants and animals respond."  

As well as contributing to the gathering of this hard scientific data, the project serves another important function, says Attenborough. "It was partly an exercise in raising awareness of climate change but it was also a way to bring people closer to nature.  

"We realise that for a lot of people nature is pretty distant from their day to day lives, so for us it's a great way to reconnect them to nature again. Getting them to look and identify a few trees and plants and animals and get inspired by nature again and hopefully encouraging them to get more involved in nature conservation."  

In this respect, the project is an invaluable communication, marketing and PR tool for the Woodland Trust. Many organisations, commercial or charitable, would give their eye teeth for the range of demonstrable results and benefits the online phenology programme has produced.  

Between 60-70% of the people who are registered as recorders had no formal contact with the Woodland Trust prior to getting involved and several hundred phenologists have gone on to join the Trust as full members, says Attenborough. "They are new faces which is great for us."  

TINY RESOURCES ARE NO BARRIER  

The project has also given the Woodland Trust its five most successful ever media campaigns and has created a means of communicating with a diverse range of people. The emails, photographs and even poetry flood in from them daily. It's a considerable success, given the relatively small budget - just under £100,000 - the project runs on each year.  

The enthusiasm of the recorders is a testament to the appeal of the project and the website's ability to involve and inspire so many people, says Attenborough. "The emails and letters show a wonderful diversity of people taking part.  

"We've got people in inner cities doing it, we've got people in very rural areas, we've got people doing it on the way to work, we've got housewives doing it. We even have a retired professor in Ireland who's confined to his home and he has a roof garden so he's looking at that and able to take part."  

The project has also brought out the 'closet phenologists', people who have been recording data on their own for years and are now sending in their notebooks. It's priceless information that covers much of the post war years when no official data was gathered, says Attenborough.  

"We're getting exciting things like that coming all the time, people saying: 'I've been recording the cuckoo for 50 years is that of any use to you?'"  

The secret of the project's appeal is the website's interactivity, the vivid way it allows recorders to see the contribution they are making, says Jon Parsons, the project's website manager.  

"People can immediately see an observation they've recorded go in. It's also a kind of phenological bank account. The system knows who you are, which observations you've made. They go into your own historical archive, so people who have been with us for the last five seasons can look back and see how their own observations have changed and compare those with national data."  

It has also become a valuable and accessible source of information for members, he adds. "In the information area of the site we try to keep people abreast of what's happening in climate change, telling them why the data they gather is so important and what use is being made of it." 

MOVING AHEAD WITH GREATER RESOURCES  

The UK Phenology Network's online plans are far from complete, however. In July this year it secured £370,000 from the Heritage Lottery Trust to start an equivalent online programme for children. The data they gather will feed into the existing phenology network but the new website will be tailored especially for them. It will also containing environmental science projects and information enabling teachers to introduce their pupils to phenology through a range of practical activities.  

Further improvements to the original website are planned too. There's scope, for example, to improve the site's visual interpretation of data to help tell a better phenological story, says Parsons.  

The real challenge, however, is finding a better way to manage the sheer numbers taking part. Harnessing the enthusiasm of the recorders more effectively and economically is a dilemma as well as an opportunity, he says.  

"We've so many emails coming in, about 10,000 a month, and it's fantastic that members can communicate at the touch of a button, but it does create an administrative mountain too. People want to talk about nature and tell you what they've seen. It has been difficult to know how to deal with that level of interest."  

One solution will be weaning those who send in their data by post from paper onto the web in order to more fully automate the system. Refusing non-online data is not an option however, he says. "An online only scheme would have cut a lot of people out. If the overall objective of the project is to connect with people it would be arrogant to do so."  

The plan now is to encourage online recorders to talk among themselves more by setting up online forums. They will be able to upload images and sound files to discuss and to assist species identification. There are also plans to bring in mentors and experts in different fields for members to talk to, says Parsons.  

"At the moment the communication is from them to us, so now we want to link these people up in their own little areas. For example snowdrop aficionados can talk to each other and ask their fellow recorders 'have you seen it yet? I've had mine'. It will be a good way of getting them to communicate with each other without us having to have to take on extra staff at this end."  

GROWTH THROUGH ALLIANCES  

Linking the website with other organisations and feeding data from one to the other is another way to get the most out of the project, both for the Trust and for other organisations that might benefit. Other wildlife organisations will be able to take data relevant to the species they protect and rebrand it as their own, for example.  

Sharing information in this way helps to improve and verify data, says Parsons. "We've recently compared our data with work that the British Trust for Ornithology is doing in tracking bird migration. When we compare our average 'first seen' dates for certain birds, they coincide beautifully."  

And as the data improves, so does the influence of the organisations that gather it. The Trust's data is already being used in some large-scale climate change research, says Attenborough. "Phenology is definitely moving up the environmental agenda. We've now got data sets for the UK which are readily usable today."  

It underlines the value of what all those observers are doing, she adds. "It's one way to make them feel they can do something to make a difference. They can come up with some concrete data that feeds into really serious studies and documents."  

"I recently went to meet a lady who has been recording for 40 years. What she does in her garden every day at 9am has an international significance and I think that's fantastic."

www.woodland-trust.org.uk

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