Looking for Wildflower Blooms and Flowering Trees with GLOBE

What if today’s GLOBE observations could be used to peer back in time? That’s what Dr. Yoseline Angel is trying to do with your photos of flowering plants and trees. In a webinar on 15 April, Dr. Angel invited the GLOBE community to become part of a flowering monitoring system by collecting land cover observations of flowering plants or tree observations of flowering trees. Your data will serve two purposes: first, it will act as a flag to alert Dr. Angel and other scientists that flowers are present at a particular place and time, and second, it will help verify the presence of flowers when they are detected in satellite data. 

Dr. Angel is asking for land cover observations of large-scale wildflower blooms in California, Arizona, and Nevada through June 1. Later in the year, she will request data from southern Africa and South America. She is also asking for GLOBE Observer Trees observations of Tabebuia Trees in Central and northern South America. 

She will then evaluate satellite data from the same date and location as the GLOBE data to identify the fingerprint of flowering plants. Every object has a unique way of reflecting and absorbing light, and that is what a satellite measures. Colorful flowers have a different signature or fingerprint in satellite data than other plants. When there are enough flowers, scientists can tease out that signature from other things also present in the image. Dr. Angel will then assess additional satellite images to find flowering plants, and use your photographs to confirm that flowers are there. This process will build a library of flower fingerprints that she and other scientists can use to identify flowers in past satellite data. (Read more in a NASA news article about airborne research related to wildflowers or Dr. Angel's scientific publication about deciphering the spectra of flowers.)

“Flowering happens following a recipe,” says Dr. Angel. “You need the right temperature and the right amount of water.” By identifying when flowering occurred in the past, she can learn about the availability of water and the timing of seasonal changes in past years. 

Learn more about Dr. Angel’s work and how you can help in the recording of the 15 April webinar:

 

More information can also be found in the GLOBE News article about Dr. Angel's research.

Photos courtesy of Dr. Yoseline Angel, scientist, University of Maryland-College Park and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

Comments