Plant Phenology: Taking the Pulse of Rangelands

Abstract

Plant phenology—timing of seasonal life cycle events—is a primary control on ecosystem productivity. Phenology data can be used to design better management systems by adjusting the timing of grazing or managed burns relative to growth stages of key species and planning restoration activities, such as targeted grazing. Tower-mounted digital cameras (phenocams) provide a cost-effective way to collect data to capture phenology metrics for vegetation greenness. Phenocam greenness values can provide canopy-level metrics in real time for a fraction of the cost of field observations and link field and satellite observations to reveal species contributions to greenness.