MW PARC Phenology Project

[Allison Sacerdote-Velat]

Greetings Midwest PARC members!

Several of us have been working with Chris, Don, and Mike at HerpMapper to put together a MW PARC Phenology project. You may remember the call for photo contributions for the website a few months ago. If those of you who contributed photos could double-check that the photo credits are correct, it would be a great help as we received a lot of images at once (see the URL at the bottom of the email). 

In partnership with HerpMapper, we encourage citizen scientists, managers, and researchers to enter phenological observations related to emergence, anuran calling activity, observations of egg masses, mating aggregations, appearance of nests, nest depredation, hatchlings/neonates, and breeding migrations. These observations will contribute to a long-term regional dataset facilitating the examination of variation in seasonal activity patterns throughout the Midwest. Additionally, contributors will be able to view real-time maps of herpetofaunal activity based on reports throughout the region.

All observations will require either a photographic or audio recording voucher which will be uploaded to HerpMapper, following their voucher guidelines. Project instructions are on the website. Please note that HerpMapper automatically limits public view of data to the county-level to protect threatened and endangered species, and their habitats.

The phenology project is now live and we encourage everyone to contribute data as herp activity progresses. For those involved in citizen science programs, we encourage use of the project page to help monitors report and track activity in their area (e.g. which frogs are calling in my county). 

The link to the page is below:

https://phenology.mwparc.org/

Best regards, 

Your Midwest PARC steering committee