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Monitoring Berries in Your Community
Overview:
Overview:
The University of Alaska Fairbanks International Arctic Research Center and Institute of Arctic Biology have been working on community-engaged research and monitoring of berries for over a decade. All the projects have emphasized youth engagement in environmental monitoring, and the process of learning, teaching and sharing knowledge across generations. The data are collected by land managers, adult volunteers, educators, families, classrooms, youth camps and youth clubs.
Because of the central importance of wild berry species for the health and culture of those of us who live in the far north, and the importance of berries to the diets of wildlife, berry phenology has been an important aspect of our projects.
The protocols come from a variety of projects that emphasize different aspects of berries that are changing in a changing climate.
Key questions your community might have:
How is the timing of flowering and fruiting of berry species changing?
How is the fruit quality and loss/removal of berries changing?
How is the abundance of berries changing? (As noted below, this question is very difficult to answer)
MONITORING PROTOCOLS
MONITORING PROTOCOLS
How is the timing of flowering and fruiting of berry species changing?
Protocols were developed to investigate the flowering and fruiting phenology of important berry species in Alaska during the UAF Melibee Project (funded by USDA NIFA and Bonanza Creek Long Term Ecological Research Program).
The basics:
Set up a site and tag berry plants as described in our Berry Phenology Monitoring Protocol.
Visit the plants weekly to count the number of buds, flowers, unripe and ripe fruits and track them through time. Use or modify the data sheets at the end of the above protocol document, which is aligned with the National Phenology Network protocols in Nature’s Notebook.
We have phenophase photo guides for a few of the berry species. Use them as a reference or create your own to share.
How is the fruit quality and loss/removal of berries changing?
A protocol for monitoring berry condition and fruit loss was developed by the UAF Winterberry Project. The protocol is used to address a specific question regarding the timing and fate of berries in fall and winter for 4 widely distributed berry species that are important food resources for people and overwintering animals in Alaska. These species include Empetrum nigrum (crowberry or blackberry), Vaccinium vitis-idaea (lingonberry or lowbush cranberry), Rosa acicularis (rosehips), and Viburnum edule (highbush cranberry). The protocol may be used or adapted for any berry species that may be of interest to a community.
The basics:
Set up site as described here https://sites.google.com/alaska.edu/winterberry/monitor-berries/step-3-site-set-up. I think you can just tag 12 plants if it is just you by yourself.
You can start before you do your abundance survey at peak berry season. Early to mid August is good timing to start for most parts of Alaska.
Here is how to collect the observations and the data sheet you need:
https://sites.google.com/alaska.edu/winterberry/monitor-berries/step-4-collect-data
A complete collection of the protocols, datasheets, supporting education materials and videos is available at: https://mkp28.wixsite.com/cbm-best-practice/winterberry-manual
What about berry abundance?
Berry abundance is more complicated to monitor than the timing of flowering and fruiting of berry condition. That is because the best berry spots move around on the landscape: places that are good in some years may not be good in other years, and vice versa. If you find a good (above-average) batch of berries and monitor them, chances are that berries there will become less abundant over time, while other areas (that you did not monitor because there wasn't much there to start with) get better. You could conclude that berries are becoming less (or more) abundant when actually it was just that particular patch where they became less (or more) abundant while abundance over a larger area may not have changed.
Berry abundance is also difficult to monitor because the number of berries is affected by many different factors, including the resources the plants had two years prior to flowering, what the conditions were like for pollinators when the plants flowered, and how many resources plants had available to turn flowers into fruits. That means the number of berries is going to vary a lot from year to year, and it takes many years to determine whether there is an overall trend or not.
If you want to monitor a single spot, you can use the "getting an estimate of berry density" section of the Winterberry Project protocol and this datasheet. This protocol uses berries per unit area rather than berries per plant. Use this method every year for the same site or sites at peak berry season, when you first hear that it is time for picking, or notice all the berries are ripe. However, this protocol only looks at one small patch, not at the whole area, and is therefore NOT APPROPRIATE FOR DETERMINING WHETHER BERRIES ARE BECOMING LESS ABUNDANT IN YOUR AREA OVERALL. To evaluate this would probably require working with a scientist who can help you develop a sampling scheme for your area. You should also count on a large effort and many years to get a good estimate of whether berry abundance is really changing over time.
UAF Contacts: Katie Spellman klspellman@alaska.edu, Christa Mulder cpmulder@alaska.edu
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