Phenologists track the seasonal behavior of plants and animals in response to climatic change. During the second half of the twentieth century, phenologists developed a large-scale project to monitor the flowering time of the common lilac (Syringa vulgaris) across the United States. By the 1960s, this approach offered a potential plant-based indicator of anthropogenic climate change, a biological signal amidst the emerging narrative of increasing levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide. As a tangible representation of changes in climate—warmer temperatures lead to earlier blooming—phenology proved highly legible to scientists, politicians, and laypeople. Yet, as phenology gained broader repute in the 1960s, both in agricultural stations and as a component program of the International Biological Program (IBP), it struggled to align itself epistemically with the regnant disciplinary assumptions of mid-century ecology. Operating in the hinterlands between laboratory and field, biology and meteorology, ecological theory and agronomy practice, phenologists challenged prevailing notions of the model organism and what it meant to study biology in the field. Rebranding the discipline as a component of ecosystem modeling, scientists successfully brought phenology within the purview of mainstream ecology. In so doing, however, they obscured its climate-relevant meteorological character and stymied the development of a biological narrative of climate change.
...MoreArticle R. Ashton Macfarlane (2021) Correction to: Wild Laboratories of Climate Change: Plants, Phenology, and Global Warming, 1955–1980. Journal of the History of Biology (pp. 341-342).
Thesis
Gary Brooten;
(2016)
The Very Useful Notion: A Rhetorical History of the Idea of Human-Made Climate Change, 1950-2000
(/isis/citation/CBB642785483/)
Article
Rodriguez-Buritica, Susana;
Raichle, Helen;
Birt, Trevor;
Webb, Robert H.;
Turner, Raymond M.;
Pierson, Elizabeth A.;
Venable, D. Lawrence;
(2013)
Population Dynamics of Sonoran Desert Saguaro Cactus (Carnegiea Gigantea) at the Desert Laboratory (Tucson, Arizona)
(/isis/citation/CBB001421423/)
Article
Whitfield, John;
(2013)
Superstars of Botany: Rare Specimens
(/isis/citation/CBB001320426/)
Article
Conner, William E.;
(2013)
An Acoustic Arms Race
(/isis/citation/CBB001320843/)
Article
James Lawrence Powell;
(2015)
Climate Scientists Virtually Unanimous Anthropogenic Global Warming Is True
(/isis/citation/CBB598642286/)
Article
Joseph Giacomelli;
(2018)
The Meaning of Uncertainty: Debating Climate Change in the Gilded-Age United States
(/isis/citation/CBB368622969/)
Thesis
Michael Verderame;
(2017)
Science, Politics, and Soul-Making: The Romantic Encounter with Climate Change
(/isis/citation/CBB568976028/)
Article
Ellis, Rebecca;
(December 2011)
Jizz and the joy of pattern recognition: Virtuosity, discipline and the agency of insight in UK naturalists’ arts of seeing
(/isis/citation/CBB821114211/)
Article
Radin, Joanna;
(2013)
Latent Life: Concepts and Practices of Human Tissue Preservation in the International Biological Program
(/isis/citation/CBB001213403/)
Article
Korobov, Dmitry S.;
Borisov, Alexander V.;
(2013)
The Origins of Terraced Field Agriculture in the Caucasus: New Discoveries in the Kislovodsk Basin
(/isis/citation/CBB001321030/)
Article
Green Musselman, Elizabeth;
(2003)
Plant Knowledge at the Cape: A Study in African and European Collaboration
(/isis/citation/CBB000401045/)
Book
Lawson, Russell M.;
(2012)
Frontier Naturalist: Jean Louis Berlandier and the Exploration of Northern Mexico and Texas
(/isis/citation/CBB001202063/)
Article
Susanne S. Renner;
Ulrich Päßler;
Pierre Moret;
(2023)
“My Reputation is at Stake.” Humboldt's Mountain Plant Geography in the Making (1803–1825)
(/isis/citation/CBB292201714/)
Article
Baytop, Asuman;
(2012)
Anadolu'nun dar bir yöresinden örnek toplam bitki toplay c lar
(/isis/citation/CBB001320512/)
Article
Burgis, Mary J.;
Dunn, Ian;
(2012)
Archives from Central Office of the International Biological Programme, 1964--74
(/isis/citation/CBB001251454/)
Article
Aronova, Elena;
Baker, Karen S.;
Oreskes, Naomi;
(2010)
Big Science and Big Data in Biology: From the International Geophysical Year through the International Biological Program to the Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) Network, 1957--Present
(/isis/citation/CBB001022658/)
Article
John Lidwell-Durnin;
(2019)
Inevitable Decay: Debates over Climate, Food Security, and Plant Heredity in Nineteenth-Century Britain
(/isis/citation/CBB118853213/)
Book
Page, Judith W;
Smith, Elise Lawton;
(2011)
Women, Literature, and the Domesticated Landscape: England's Disciples of Flora, 1780--1870
(/isis/citation/CBB001214713/)
Chapter
Achim Mittag;
(2010)
Becoming Acquainted with Nature from the Odes: Sidelights on the Study of the Flora and Fauna in Song Dynasty's Shijing 詩 經 (classic of Odes) Scholarship
(/isis/citation/CBB657755763/)
Article
John Edmondson;
(2018)
Charles Deering (c. 1690–1749): Author of an Early Flora of Nottingham
(/isis/citation/CBB389369282/)
Be the first to comment!