Target: Monitoring migrations & seasons—on the local as well as large scale.
- Importance to Food & Agr: Migrations of birds, pollinators, and other insects are directly applicable to food production. In addition, migrations of other iconic species such as whooping cranes, hummingbirds, monarchs, and robins give a sense of the progression of the seasons and potential food production impacts in surrounding areas and across the continent.
- Issues: As mentioned in the phenology section, besides variations from year-to-year, long-term changes, disruptions, and mis-matches in timing due to climate change are of increasing importance, often requiring adaptations in our growing systems.
- Observing Options:
- Recording First Occurrences on your calendar is one way to compare year-to-year migrations in your area.
- Journey North is one of the best websites for monitoring migration and seasonal changes of many types whether you contribute data or not. See their latest maps here.
- Citizen Science: As part of a citizen science project such as Journey North above, your data can help scientists track the march of the seasons, and specific species critical to food production.
Besides Journey North, many of the citizen science programs in this section allow you to record the first occurrence of a bird, insect, bloom, or fall frost, etc., and compare with other observers in your area or nationwide.
