We invite you to join Season Spotter, where you can help with an ongoing climate change research project. We have over 250 digital cameras mounted on towers and platforms across North America (and beyond) taking continual images of vegetated landscapes including forests, grasslands, and croplands. The result is images – a lot of images – that provide a unique record of how plants respond to seasonal change including the timing of leafing, flowering, and fruiting.
While some of the images can be categorized by using automated algorithms, humans are much better at tasks involving visual skills such as pattern recognition. That’s where you come in. A little bit of your time can further research to better understand how the natural world responds to changing climate. Help us classify landscape images so that we can produce forecasts that will be useful for a wide range of purposes, including in agriculture, conservation, tourism, and public health.