The roses a.41 solicitation highlights the need within the earth science community to develop a "more complete and more accurate understanding of the temporal and spatial behavior of plant and animals…

This federal contract award was made by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Shared Services Center to Conservation Science Partners, Inc. (doing business as Conservation Science Partners Inc.), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, to develop an Advanced Pheno-Climatic Information System (APIS).

The objective of the $345,804 grant is to create tools, workflows, and software to compile and integrate phenological and climate data from various sources, including in-situ measurements, cameras, flux towers, airborne data, and satellite observations. This system aims to facilitate collaboration within the research community and accelerate the production and publication of results related to the impact of climate change on plant and animal species. No set-aside designation was used for this award.

The roses a.41 solicitation highlights the need within the earth science community to develop a "more complete and more accurate understanding of the temporal and spatial behavior of plant and animals species." IT specifically calls for the analysis of "time series measurements of key environmental parameters with the spatiotemporal distribution of organismal populations, communities, and species for improved understanding of the impact of climate change." phenological observations (the study of cyclic and seasonal natural phenomena, especially in relation to climate and plant and animal life) are highly relevant to these needs. There are extensive existing efforts to collect phenologically-relevant information, including a range of data from in situ, to near-surface cameras and flux towers, to airborne data, to polar orbiting and geostationary satellites. There are also significant efforts to provide gridded historical and projected climate data. However, there is no consolidated effort to compile spatially-associated pheno-climatic information into a data framework that would improve information comparison and reuse, facilitate collaboration within the research community, and increase the speed of production and publication of results related to the needs identified in the solicitation. Here, our objective is to develop an advanced pheno-climatic information system (APIS). The system will incorporate tools, workflows, and software for bringing phenological and climate data together. APIS will be designed to leverage existing expertise, techniques, and networks as much as possible. The primary benefit of this effort is that IT will focus on providing pheno-climatic data in way that would allow the scientific community to test families of hypotheses generated from the seed hypothesis that CL mate change is influencing the spatial distribution and temporal behavior of key populations of organisms, communities, and species.