Jean Combes’s love of nature as a child led her to note the signs of starting spring. Her long-term records are now part of a vital growing citizen science dataset that starkly shows how climate change is shifting the timing of the natural world.
For people living in colder parts of the world, watching for the first signs of spring — from the opening of snowdrops and daffodils, to birds building their nests, to the return of bees and butterflies — is a common winter pastime. Jean Combes has not just been watching out for these signs, but also recording them, ever since she was a child. Taking note of the earliest emergence of leaves in springtime — first as a child of 11 years, and then continuously from the age of 20 years — Jean has now collected one of the longest continuous datasets of spring leaf-out time in the UK (see also Correspondence by Vitasse et al.). These almost 75 years of data show a clear shift that corroborates shifts now acknowledged for diverse species around the world: springtime is coming earlier, and the patterns of advance match the global trends in the changing climate. Jean’s naturalist endeavours have already earned her high honours in the form of an OBE (Order of the British Empire), and recognition of her own work is mirrored in a growing recognition of the vital role of citizen scientists in tracking the signs of our rapidly changing world.
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Source: Ecology - nature.com
