TY - JOUR
T1 - Volunteer-contributed observations of flowering often correlate with airborne pollen concentrations
AU - Crimmins, Theresa M.
AU - Vogt, Elizabeth
AU - Brown, Claudia L.
AU - Dalan, Dan
AU - Manangan, Arie
AU - Robinson, Guy
AU - Song, Yiluan
AU - Zhu, Kai
AU - Katz, Daniel S.W.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2023, The Author(s) under exclusive licence to International Society of Biometeorology.
PY - 2023/8
Y1 - 2023/8
N2 - Characterizing airborne pollen concentrations is crucial for supporting allergy and asthma management; however, pollen monitoring is labor intensive and, in the USA, geographically limited. The USA National Phenology Network (USA-NPN) engages thousands of volunteer observers in regularly documenting the developmental and reproductive status of plants. The reports of flower and pollen cone status contributed to the USA-NPN’s platform, Nature’s Notebook, have the potential to help address gaps in pollen monitoring by providing real-time, spatially explicit information from across the country. In this study, we assessed whether observations of flower and pollen cone status contributed to Nature’s Notebook can serve as effective proxies for airborne pollen concentrations. We compared daily pollen concentrations from 36 National Allergy Bureau (NAB) stations in the USA with flowering and pollen cone status observations collected within 200 km of each NAB station in each year, 2009–2021, for 15 common tree taxa using Spearman’s correlations. Of 350 comparisons, 58% of correlations were significant (p < 0.05). Comparisons could be made at the largest numbers of sites for Acer and Quercus. Quercus demonstrated a comparatively high proportion of tests with significant agreement (median ρ = 0.49). Juglans demonstrated the strongest overall coherence between the two datasets (median ρ = 0.79), though comparisons were made at only a small number of sites. For particular taxa, volunteer-contributed flowering status observations demonstrate promise to indicate seasonal patterns in airborne pollen concentrations. The quantity of observations, and therefore, their utility for supporting pollen alerts, could be substantially increased through a formal observation campaign.
AB - Characterizing airborne pollen concentrations is crucial for supporting allergy and asthma management; however, pollen monitoring is labor intensive and, in the USA, geographically limited. The USA National Phenology Network (USA-NPN) engages thousands of volunteer observers in regularly documenting the developmental and reproductive status of plants. The reports of flower and pollen cone status contributed to the USA-NPN’s platform, Nature’s Notebook, have the potential to help address gaps in pollen monitoring by providing real-time, spatially explicit information from across the country. In this study, we assessed whether observations of flower and pollen cone status contributed to Nature’s Notebook can serve as effective proxies for airborne pollen concentrations. We compared daily pollen concentrations from 36 National Allergy Bureau (NAB) stations in the USA with flowering and pollen cone status observations collected within 200 km of each NAB station in each year, 2009–2021, for 15 common tree taxa using Spearman’s correlations. Of 350 comparisons, 58% of correlations were significant (p < 0.05). Comparisons could be made at the largest numbers of sites for Acer and Quercus. Quercus demonstrated a comparatively high proportion of tests with significant agreement (median ρ = 0.49). Juglans demonstrated the strongest overall coherence between the two datasets (median ρ = 0.79), though comparisons were made at only a small number of sites. For particular taxa, volunteer-contributed flowering status observations demonstrate promise to indicate seasonal patterns in airborne pollen concentrations. The quantity of observations, and therefore, their utility for supporting pollen alerts, could be substantially increased through a formal observation campaign.
KW - Citizen science
KW - Nature’s Notebook
KW - USA National Phenology Network
KW - flowering
KW - phenology
KW - pollen monitoring
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85161965269&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85161965269&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/s00484-023-02506-3
DO - 10.1007/s00484-023-02506-3
M3 - Article
C2 - 37330426
AN - SCOPUS:85161965269
SN - 0020-7128
VL - 67
SP - 1363
EP - 1372
JO - International journal of biometeorology
JF - International journal of biometeorology
IS - 8
ER -