Phenology Commission

The Phenology 2025 Conference “PHENO2025 – Towards a Global Phenology Science” is the first Phenology Conference in the Global South and in a tropical country, Brazil. PHENO2025 represents a crucial gathering for scientists, researchers, students, technicians and policymakers from all around the world dedicated to understanding the impacts of climate change on ecosystems through the lens of phenology.

PHENO2025 conference aims to foster global collaboration and innovation in monitoring, modeling, and predicting phenological shifts. Specific areas of interest include phenology communities and networks, standards and protocols for data collection, phenology as a bio-indicator of climate change, impacts of phenology on organism performance and ecosystem function, physiological and genetic determinism, remote sensing phenology, biodiversity conservation and ecological restoration, bringing to scene highly diverse ecosystems. Other relevant topics addressed are phenological decoupling and the temporality of ecological networks and interactions, climate change and urban phenology, citizen science, networks and botanical gardens, and the use of historical data and herbarium and museum collections to understand temporal responses to climate change. This comprehensive approach is vital for developing adaptive strategies to mitigate the adverse effects of climate change on biodiversity, food production, planetary health and human wellbeing.

PHENO2025 will serve as a platform to highlight the importance of standardized global phenological data collection and sharing. Enhanced international cooperation can lead to more comprehensive datasets, enabling better-informed decisions at local, regional and global levels. The conference will also address the integration of traditional ecological knowledge with modern scientific approaches, emphasizing the role of indigenous and local communities in phenological research. Ultimately, PHENO 2025 will be a venue bridging Global North and South, positioned to advance the field of phenology, contributing to more resilient ecosystems and societies in the face of a rapidly changing climate

Commission Overview

Vegetation dynamics like growth, reproduction, winter rest, competition for nutrients, water, and light are strongly influenced and determined by climate variables. A change in climate will result in a change of these dynamics. A scientific discipline, which is able to link vegetation dynamics with climate variables, is phenology. Phenology is the study of periodic plant and animal life cycle events and how these are influenced by seasonal and interannual variations in climate. Examples include flowering, budburst, insect hatching, bird nesting, fruit ripening, and leaf fall (so called phenophases). Numerous studies have already provided insight into the relationship between climate variables and the timing of these phenophases. In the context of climate change, phenology also provides indicators for ecosystem responses and has clearly shown that plants and animals are already responding to observed increases in global mean temperature. The climate-induced changes in vegetation dynamics will have an impact on all kinds of species-species interactions and eventually on ecosystem composition and structure. Thus, biodiversity will change in response. The theory is that expected future changes in climate will continue to change vegetation dynamics and biodiversity. In order to effectively assess regional changes in biodiversity, extensive multi-species inventories across climatic gradients are required.

Objectives

To increase our understanding of the role of climate variables in vegetation dynamics;
To develop a combined observational program configured to be sensitive to modifications in plant/animal phenology and biodiversity changes which is able to form an effective system for early detection and warning of impending global-scale changes in ecosystems;
To strategically deploy new and augment existing observational networks, initially in mid latitudes;
Contribute to the combined objectives of the Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC), especially adaptation, and the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)

Learn more about past Phenology Conferences!

For more information about the Phenology Commission, please contact Marie Keatley (marie.keatley[at]rmit.edu.au) who serves as Commission Chair.