Have you wondered how the natural world may be changing with the changes in climate? In SeasonWatch, we are working with children and adults across India since 2011 to understand seasonality in leafing, flowering, and fruiting in trees.
We are organizing our third bioblitz event for this year, the September Tree Quest, from 13 to 16 September 2019. This is a 4-day, country-wide, rapid assessment of the phenology of common Indian trees.
Participating in the Tree Quest is easy:
Using our app (for Android phone on Google Play) or website, ‘Register’ if you are new to SeasonWatch.
Go outdoors anytime between 13 to 16 September and look at one or more trees (see list here).
Record leaves, flowers, and fruits and upload your ‘casual observations’.
Tree watching is great fun when the experience is shared with others. And so, this tree quest is all about team effort! Do think of ways in which you can involve others. If you are at a school, college or university, you could get a group of students to go out and observe trees and nature. Or you could do something similar in your residential complex or neighbourhood. Please feel free to write back to discuss ideas.
The September Tree Quest will be followed by one more events in December this year. Let’s join hands in understanding how our precious trees respond to the changing seasons!
There are fun games and quizzes (about trees and their associations with other plants and animals) leading up to this event on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Hi there! You can start with trees you definitely know - Neem, Mango, Tamarind, Teak, Amla, Banyan, Peepal etc. are fairly easy to recognize and are likely to be found in urban and rural areas easily. You can also send us a picture at out Whatsapp number +91 7349567602 and we can try and get trees IDed for you :)! Thank you for your interest!
Thanks for spreading the word! At present the total stands at 5000+. But Central, Northern and eastern India remain poorly represented. Requesting all cubists based anywhere outside of southern India to please contribute!
Do check out the region-wise summary of trees, species, people contributing and live observations at http://seasonwatch.in/liveupdates.php. If you are based anywhere outside of peninsular India, help us fill in those gaps
What do 4 days of data on trees tell us about them? That there are interesting gradients in the leaf, flower and fruit phenology in the most commonly observed trees! Here’s what Neem, mango and gulmohur were doing during the SeptemberTreeQuest.
A final report onthis event is available here. Here is an animation of how Mango phenology changed over 4 seasons as recorded during the Tree Quests in December, March, June and September:
