Interest and Impact of Phenology in the Media

Phenology is a science with strong media interest. It attracts public attention from several perspectives:

• The empirical verification of advances or delays in the occurrence of different plant or animal phenophases.
• The possibility of quantifying phenophase shifts and their correlation with climatic variables to establish the relationship with climate change.
• The concrete economic impact on crop management and the resulting production.
• The aesthetic beauty associated with phenophase events, such as leaf senescence (for example, the annual chromatic variations of deciduous forests) or spring flowering (as seen in extensive fruit tree crops).

Several cases are presented in which the media have requested collaboration from the Phenological Network of Catalonia, as well as the impact on different social media platforms of posts related to phenology. It is also shown how the evolution of informational interest in phenology can be measured through parameters such as the number of views of television videos, news published online, link sharing, retweets, likes, etc. From these parameters, a growing interest in phenology among the population is inferred.