Mini workshop: Building Next-Generation Data Infrastructure for Plant Phenology

Workshop overview

What new software tools would you like to see for plant phenological data and research? Are there data resources you wish you could access or use but are not sure how (or that don’t even exist yet)? What frontiers in phenological research could new data and software support?

Our team[1] has been developing methods and tools for integrating, mobilizing, and analyzing plant phenological data, such as the Plant Phenology Ontology https://doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2018.00517 and a prototype data portal https://plantphenology.org/ that integrates various in-situ and historical datasets from around the globe. We are also investigating methods for generating and integrating new phenological data from digital herbarium records and community scientists’ photographs from BudBurst https://budburst.org/ and iNaturalist https://www.inaturalist.org/. Now, we would value your thoughts about 1) how to make plant phenological data more accessible and easier to use; 2) which high-value phenological datasets are still missing; 3) what kinds of analyses you wish you could do with phenological data; and 4) what barriers are limiting large-scale plant phenological research.

We will be hosting a virtual, 90-minute, mini-workshop on Wednesday, June 17, from 3:00-4:30 PM Eastern Daylight Time (see in your local time https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?msg=Phenology+mini-workshop&iso=20200617T15&p1=2132&ah=1&am=30), and we would love to hear what you think about these issues. Your feedback will help guide efforts to develop a next generation of phenological data and tools. We welcome participants from outside of North America, too, and we recognize that 3:00 PM in the eastern U.S. might not be a great time for researchers from other continents. Therefore, if we have sufficient international registrants, we will hold one or more additional workshops at alternative times to better accommodate work schedules in other parts of the world. Even if you cannot attend the virtual workshop but you would still like to share your thoughts with us, you can instead choose to complete a brief survey to let us know what you think. So, if these issues are of interest to you, please complete the short registration form and get in touch!

Afterwards, we will generate a report summarizing the results of the workshop and share it with all participants.

Registration

To register for the workshop or to let us know you’d like to complete a brief survey instead, please fill out the short registration form: https://forms.gle/tCy7eSQq33KjyuMF6.

Tentative agenda

Date: Wednesday, June 17, 2020

Time: 3:00-4:30 PM EDT (2:00 PM CDT, 1:00 PM MDT, 12:00 PM PDT, see in your local time https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?msg=Phenology+mini-workshop&iso=20200617T15&p1=2132&ah=1&am=30 )

3:00 PM

Introductory remarks, workshop overview and scope.

3:10 PM

Current landscape of plant phenological data, tools, and use cases; survey interests of attendees.

3:40

Breakout group session 1: Discuss key issues in small groups of no more than six participants.

3:00

Breakout group session 2.

4:20 PM

Reconvene as a full group, wrap up.

[1] Brian Stucky, Rob Guralnick and Daijiang Li (Florida Museum of Natural History); Ramona Walls (University of Arizona); Ellen Denny (USA National Phenology Network); John Deck (Biocode, LLC); Jennifer Schwarz and Taran Lichtenberger (Chicago Botanic Garden); Carrie Seltzer (iNaturalist)