25 Mar The Essex BioBlitz aims to collect valuable data on climate change
Essex Wildlife Trust and the University of Essex have launched a new citizen science project, the Essex BioBlitz, with the aim of capturing data on how climate change is impacting our local environment. The project has been launched in response to COP26, to uncover how local green spaces have been impacted by climate change, and how species are having to adapt.
The project will be collecting data on flowering plants when they’re in bloom – a key indicator to determine how timings are changing in the environment.
David Clark, Postdoctoral Research Fellow (Institute for Analytics and Data Science) School of Life Sciences from the University of Essex, says:
“When we think about global climate change, we tend to think of it having impacts in far-away places like the Polar regions, but the fact is that climate change will impact everyone, everywhere. In Essex, we’re no different and climate change is already having a large effect on our wonderful local biodiversity, probably without us even realising! The Essex BioBlitz is a chance for us to get to know our local plant diversity a bit better, to appreciate its importance, and to realise that climate change is already affecting it.
By submitting records on five flowering plants each week, you’ll be helping to build the largest, most detailed data on plant flowering times in Essex ever recorded! Using this data, we can compare what is happening in Essex to other areas of the country, but also to historic data to see how climate change is already shaping the timing and duration of flowering in our flora.”
This citizen science project is open to members of the public across Essex who would like to contribute. Participants are asked to download the free app iNaturalist and take photos of up to five flowering plants each week, uploading those to the app. The project will run from Friday 1 April until Friday 30 September and aims to collect 2,000 data points, that will help inform researchers.
Bailey Tait, Campaigns Officer at Essex Wildlife Trust, says:
“The natural world is a vast, tangled web of connected ecosystems and this hangs in a delicate balance. Even the slightest change to global temperatures can tip the balance and impact wildlife. We’re hoping to discover more about the local impacts our county faces in relation to climate change, while empowering individuals to collect real-life data on climate change. The more people who are able to take part, the more valuable data we will be able to learn from.”
To find out more about this citizen science project, visit www.essexwt.org.uk/essex-bioblitz-2022
