Team Name: USA National Phenology Network (NPN) National Coordination Office (NCO). The team members are Theresa Crimmins, Director; Erin Posthumus, Outreach Coordinator and US Fish & Wildlife Service Liaison; Alyssa Rosemartin, Partner & Application Specialist; Samantha Brewer, Volunteer Engagement Coordinator; Ellen Denny, Monitoring Design & Data Coordinator; Jeff Switzer, Systems Analyst; Nathan Acosta, Web Developer

The USA National Phenology Network (USA-NPN) is a continental-scale network of standardized, routine, and sustained phenological observations for plants and animals, and the tools to analyze them at local to national scales (www.usapnpn.org). In operation since 2007, USA-NPN collects, organizes, and delivers research-grade phenological data, information, and forecasts to advance global change research; inform natural resource policy and management; and promote understanding of phenology by a wide range of audiences. The USA-NPN team is based at the University of Arizona and includes Theresa Crimmins, Nathan Acosta, Samantha Brewer, Ellen Denny, Erin Posthumus, Alyssa Rosemartin, and Jeff Switzer. The USA-NPN team epitomizes the spirit of the AGU Science and Society Section Team Award. The team has a long and deep record of scientific and societal impact across scales. It is dedicated to inclusion and equitability in their data, collaborations, and operation, while fully embracing the tenets of knowledge coproduction, where partner needs dictate the format, frequency, and lead time of product delivery.

Citizen science data are often criticized for a lack of reliability or unevenness in observations, but the work of the USA-NPN team to create, maintain, and communicate standardized protocols for observations, data curation, data access, and synthesis into national- scale products makes USA-NPN an uncommonly robust network compared to many crowd- sourced citizen science endeavors. USA-NPN’s citizen science platform, Nature’s Notebook (https://www.naturesnotebook.org), is used routinely by tens of thousands of citizens and professionals across the United States. Observations enabled by Nature’s Notebook now exceed 34M records for more than 1,750 plant and animal species and is growing by approximately 4M records each year. The USA-NPN team has created tools for downloading, visualizing, and synthesizing phenological data, enabling access and use by a wide breadth of users. USA-NPN programs are described in more than 40 publications, and USA-NPN data have been used in 40 Ph.D. and M.S. theses and more than 175 scientific publications. NPN protocols, products, and tools have been adopted by instructors at more than 100 higher education institutions and more than 100 teachers in K–12. USA-NPN maps and results reach millions of citizens through the news media each year. The USA-NPN team has helped invigorate a rebirth of phenological monitoring as a critical element of citizen science and global change research, assessment, and adaptation. I cannot imagine a more impactful and deserving recipient of the Science for Society Section Team Award than the USA-NPN team.

—Julio L. Betancourt, U.S. Geological Survey, Reston, Va.

We are honored and excited that the USA National Phenology Network is receiving this recognition from AGU—thank you! Without our respective participants and their efforts, we are not a network. We first and foremost thank the tens of thousands of individuals who have contributed to the USA National Phenology Network over the years, either by documenting phenology through Nature’s Notebook, engaging groups of observers through local phenology programs, using the data, or shaping the network’s activities. Thank you for your continued engagement. We are also truly grateful to our nominators for this award, Drs. Julio Betancourt, Erynn Maynard-Bean, Jeffrey Morisette, Andrew Richardson, Christine Rollinson, and Elizabeth Wolkovich. The aims of our network are to collect, store, and share phenology data and information of the highest achievable rigor and quality with the aims of advancing science, supporting decisions in a wide range of sectors, communicating and connecting with individuals of all ages and backgrounds, and growing an inclusive and equitable network. As one of the earliest to detect and easiest to observe responses to rapidly changing climate conditions, phenology is an important feature of many aspects of our everyday lives. Changes to phenology have the potential to dramatically impact culture, ecology, and economics. Our team is encouraged by the growth the network has experienced in engagement and data collection as well as by data use in recent years, as our aim is to provide data and information to enable greater understanding, adaptation, and mitigation to rapidly changing conditions. This recognition acknowledges our efforts in these areas and gives us the boost to further our work to engage broader and more diverse communities in both phenology data collection and use. —USA National Phenology Network, University of Arizona, Tucson