Ten years monitoring crops with citizen science

The Meteorological Service of Catalonia (SMC) has been carrying out phenological monitoring of crops since 2013 to study the impact of climate change on the ecosystem. For this purpose, it was created the Phenological Network of Catalonia (Fenocat), which is made up of eighty observers who monitor the main phenophases of fruit trees such as almond, cherry, olive, apple, orange, or vine, as well as annual winter crops as wheat or barley, annual summer crops as maize or sunflower, and forage herbs such as alfalfa. In addition, 14 birds and 6 butterflies are also monitored.

The Fenocat is a citizen science network whose observers report data two or three times per week, carrying out a periodic assessment of the status of the phenophases for a plant, rather than simply recording the date of an event. This observation system allows the recording of second occurrences in the same season or year (second flowering, second leaf sprouting, second fruit formation), events that happen more frequently due to climate change. The observers insert the information directly into the database using a web application in situ; the web application lets them compare their observations with those produced by other observers.

Fenocat uses BBCH codification and is a data provider of the Pan-European Phenology Database (PEP725).

As genetic factors determine the phenological response, it was carried out a cultivar identification using genetic markers (DNA extraction, Genotyping using molecular markers -SSRs or SNPs- and a calculation of the similarity between the analysed samples and the database information of the Centre for Research in Agricultural Genomics).

After ten years of observations and more than 1,150,000 data collected, we observe a general advance in phenophases such as bud burst, full flowering and maturation, and a delay in the leave fall. For example, in the specific case of the almond tree, the sprouting of the first leaves has advanced 13 days in 10 years, full flowering has advanced by 9 days in 10 years, and the maturation of the almond happens 23 days earlier than 10 years ago (average data for all of Catalonia).