Citizen Science Goes Dutch

One of my favorite websites, hands down, is Stuff Dutch People Like (#22: Hairgel! #27: Picking Their Noses!). Yeah, check it out. Posts usually come complete with video and/or photographic evidence. Now I get to add one to the list: phenology.

First of all, let’s get one thing straight. I’m talking about phenology, not phrenology. “One small ‘r’ away from serious quackdom,” as my friend and colleague Alex Gallefent joked when he heard I was working on a piece about phenology.

Anyway, the point is this: phenology is the study of the life-cycle of plants and animals, and how those life-cycles are affected by seasonal and climactic changes. And the Dutch like doing it. How much? Well, last year Arnold van Vliet, who is an associate professor at Wageningen University and who coordinates the Dutch phenological network called Nature’s Calendar, asked Dutch drivers if they would be willing to count the number of smashed bugs on their license plates after a summer drive. Splash Teller, as it was called in Dutch, proved to be wildly successful, and yielded some interesting census data on the number and types of insect species in The Netherlands. OK, you’re curious — an estimated 2 trillion (Yes, two TRILLION) insects are killed on Dutch roads each year. Oh, the humanity!

The truth is that van Vliet has been tapping into the Dutch willingness to help collect phenological data for years now. He started Nature’s Calendar in 2001. On the website, volunteers from across The Netherlands can note when certain flowers start to bloom, when certain migratory birds return, or when the first butterflies are spotted. Van Vliet says he currently oversees around 8,000 volunteers who contribute, which is pretty good for a nation of around 17 million.

In comparison, the USA National Phenological Network, which has been up and running since 2007, has 4,000 volunteers.

Van Vliet will be the first to tell you that the gathering of data such as this is hardly new in Holland. From 1868 to 1968, various networks of Dutch observers noted these kinds of data.

“There was one local gentleman,” says van Vliet, “who, from 1936 until two months before his death in 1992, recorded the time of flowering for some 300 species of plants in his backyard.”

“And there’s another gentleman,” van Vliet continues, “who since 1973 has made observations every 10 days about the intensity of flowering in some 70 species he grows.”

For phenologists, these kinds of historical data are pure scientific gold. One of the reasons that van Vliet re-started the Dutch phenological network in 2001 was so that first, the old data could be digitized and organized, and second, that new data gathered could be compared with the old.

And what’s the verdict? Van Vliet says the data indicate that The Netherlands is experiencing a month longer growing season. Spring, in effect, is starting three weeks earlier, and autumn is beginning a week later. Scientists are still working on trying to figure out exactly what this means for the flora and fauna in The Netherlands.

But van Vliet says that the changes are certainly having real effects on people’s health, and that paying attention to the phenological data can make all the difference.

Take hay fever for example.  ”When do people get hay fever?” van Vliet asks. “When the plants start to flower. And if those plants start to flower three weeks earlier, people start to get problems three weeks earlier. If they aren’t aware, then they are late in taking their medicines, and they suffer.”

Likewise, van Vliet notes, doctors and pharmacists need to pay attention to this as well, so that they can advise patients correctly.

I ask van Vliet why he thinks Nature’s Calendar and the like have been so successful in The Netherlands. He says it’s not necessarily because the Dutch like doing these things. Rather, he says, its because he has chosen to highlight topics, like hay fever, which have a direct relevance to people’s lives. There’s now a website, for example, where Dutch allergy sufferers can track pollen counts across the country, and get an accurate forecast of when their allergies might be at their worst.

As an allergy sufferer myself, I have to admit that knowing such a website exists might make me keep a closer eye on the birch trees and the grasses that spark my own sneezing fits.

Van Vliet’s latest piece of web-based, citizen-driven phenology is called Tick Radar. The Netherlands has a real tick problem, and Lyme Disease is prevalent in the country. “I think we have more total cases of Lyme Disease here in The Netherlands than in the entire United States,” says van Vliet.

On the Tick Radar site, anyone in the country can report a tick bite, and also the red ring around the bite which is often a tell-tale sign of Lyme Disease. The incidents are then displayed on a map of the country, and users can get a clearer picture of where the ticks are doing the biting, and can plan their camping or hiking holidays accordingly.

And I think we can all agree that “Avoiding Lyme Disease” is pretty high on the list of things that “Stuff Dutch People (and The Rest of Us) REALLY Like.”

Follow @clark_boyd