Tracking the Colour of Peatlands

You can read about the project here: ‘Citizen Science Tracks the Health of the planet’s peatlands‘ and here: Tracking the Colour of Peatlands project site

What is peatland green leaf phenology?

Plant phenology refers to the study of the timing and seasonal changes in plants’ life cycle events. It involves observing and recording when plants bud, leaf out (become ‘green’), flower, and fruit, as well as when they shed leaves or go dormant (turn brown).

The phenology of leaf traits (or green leaf phenology e.g., greenness, timing of leaf-out and senescence) are important drivers of terrestrial carbon cycling

We can use smartphone RGB photos to understand how these plants ‘green up‘ over the summer, the timing of when they hit their maximum greenness and how they start to turn brown in the autumn.

This project uses community science to collect photographs of wetlands and peatlands over the course of the year. Any time someone visits a site, they can take a fixed-point photograph of the wetland using one of the specially designed phone cradles and send the photograph over. This allows us to build up a picture of how these wetlands change over the course of the year with regards to their colour.