(website under construction)
Phenology is the study of the life cycle of plants and animals and their interactions with environment. For plants, the most visible changes concern leaves and flowers: budburst, leaf unfolding, flowering, senescence….. (Read What is phenology?)
Plant phenology controls the seasonality of biogeochemical (water, carbon and nutrients) and bio-physical processes (albedo and energy) of ecosystems. It plays a key role in ecosystems composition and interactions between species and with animals. Besides its role in ecosystems evolution, phenological events are also related to public health problems (allergies), forestry and agriculture. (Read Why phenology matters?)
Plant phenology is closely linked to local environmental conditions. It is now widely acknowledged that temperature is one of the main factor driving plant phenology. However, temperature alone does not fully explain the recent observed shifts in phenology induced by climate change. Other environmental variables as light quality and intensity, drought or nutrient stresses might also affect phenological processes. However, the lack of continuous measurement of micro-environmental variables at the tree level does not allow the scientific community to disentangle their effects on phenology. (Read What drives phenology?)
Why FoliArduino? simply for Foliar & Arduino. This project aims at developing a low-cost but robust autonomous system that will combine a small meteorological station and image acquisition at a high temporal resolution (Read Material). FoliArduino will monitor temperature, precipitation, soil humidity, air humidity, and light intensity and quality received by trees all over the year. The acquisition of continuous micro-environmental conditions and images at the tree level will allow us to disentangle the different effects of meteorological variables on phenological events (Read Concept and objectives). Once fully developed, FoliArduino will be deployed, firstly on existing experimental stations that already measure soil and other ecosystem properties, and secondly to a wider community as a citizen science project. Of course this open-source project will be available to whoever wants to monitor any type of plants (agricultural fields, indoor plants, or whatever …) anywhere in the world.
FoliArduino’s code is hosted at GitHub: mpeaucelle/FoliArduino/
The FoliArduino project is still in its development stage. Contact me if you want to collaborate!
Soon more information about the project! Be patient…