Chilling and forcing from cut twigs - how to simplify phenological experiments for citizen science

  • Low-cost phenological experiments with cut twigs are increasingly used to study bud development in response to spring warming and photoperiod. However, a broader variety of species needs to be tackled and in particular the influence of insufficient winter chilling deserves more attention. Therefore, we investigated if and how chilling requirements can be efficiently investigated by cut twigs and how this low-tech approach could be successfully implemented as a citizen science or school project. We conducted an experiment on bud burst and leaf development of Corylus avellana L. twigs, with natural chilling outdoors on a shrub (S) and another chilling treatment as cut twigs in containers (C), and subsequent forcing indoors. Subsampling of the number of cutting dates and number of twigs was used to infer minimum required sample sizes. Apart from insufficiently chilled twigs, ~80% of the twigs (both S and C) reached leaf out. For multiple definitions of chilling and forcing, a negativeLow-cost phenological experiments with cut twigs are increasingly used to study bud development in response to spring warming and photoperiod. However, a broader variety of species needs to be tackled and in particular the influence of insufficient winter chilling deserves more attention. Therefore, we investigated if and how chilling requirements can be efficiently investigated by cut twigs and how this low-tech approach could be successfully implemented as a citizen science or school project. We conducted an experiment on bud burst and leaf development of Corylus avellana L. twigs, with natural chilling outdoors on a shrub (S) and another chilling treatment as cut twigs in containers (C), and subsequent forcing indoors. Subsampling of the number of cutting dates and number of twigs was used to infer minimum required sample sizes. Apart from insufficiently chilled twigs, ~80% of the twigs (both S and C) reached leaf out. For multiple definitions of chilling and forcing, a negative exponential relationship was revealed between chilling and amount of forcing needed to reach certain developmental stages. At least 5 out of 15 cutting dates or alternatively half of the 10 twig repetitions, but especially those mirroring low chilling conditions, were needed to describe the chilling-forcing relationship with some degree of robustness. In addition, for cutting dates with long chilling, i.e., from January onwards, freshly cut twigs (S) required significantly more forcing to reach bud burst than twigs from containers (C), although the effect was small. In general, chilling conditions of mature shrubs were well captured by cut twigs, therefore opening the possibility of chilling through refrigeration. We conclude that experimental protocols as outlined here are feasible for citizen scientists, school projects, and science education, and would have the potential to advance the research field if carried out on a large scale. We provide an easy-to-use Shiny simulation app to enable citizen scientists to build up a bud development model based on their own experimental data and then simulate future phenological development with winter and/or spring warming. This may encourage them to further study other aspects of climate change and the impacts of climate change.show moreshow less

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Metadaten
Author:Annette Menzel, Ye Yuan, Andreas Hamann, Ulrike OhlGND, Michael Matiu
URN:urn:nbn:de:bvb:384-opus4-794558
Frontdoor URLhttps://opus.bibliothek.uni-augsburg.de/opus4/79455
ISSN:1664-462XOPAC
Parent Title (English):Frontiers in Plant Science
Publisher:Frontiers Media S.A.
Type:Article
Language:English
Date of first Publication:2020/09/04
Publishing Institution:Universität Augsburg
Release Date:2020/09/07
Tag:climate change; phenology; bud burst; school project; science education; Shiny App
Volume:11
First Page:561413
DOI:https://doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2020.561413
Institutes:Fakultät für Angewandte Informatik
Fakultätsübergreifende Institute und Einrichtungen
Fakultät für Angewandte Informatik / Institut für Geographie
Fakultät für Angewandte Informatik / Institut für Geographie / Lehrstuhl für Didaktik der Geographie
Fakultätsübergreifende Institute und Einrichtungen / Zentrum für Klimaresilienz
Dewey Decimal Classification:5 Naturwissenschaften und Mathematik / 50 Naturwissenschaften / 500 Naturwissenschaften und Mathematik
Licence (German):CC-BY 4.0: Creative Commons: Namensnennung (mit Print on Demand)