2018 - Nature's Notebook Signage

In spring, 2018 Nature’s Notebook and the Campus Arboretum began collaborating on a project for the Krutch Garden on the mall at the University of Arizona. The Krutch garden is a site desigated by the Nature's Notebook program for citizen science collection of phenology data. To support participants in the program, individual plants are marked so that they may be located and identified for observation and data collection. Temporary markers have been in use for years but have not held up to our intense climate. As a result, we invested in permanent metal posts with new signs showing the plant identify. Further, the signs now contain QR codes that allow participants to link to online sites including the Campus Arboretum species description pages and to the the Nature’s Notebook species phenological instructions and species information.
 

LoriAnne Barnett, Education Coordinator for Nature’s Notebook, and Tanya Quist, Associate Professor of Practice in the School of Plant Sciences and Director of the University's Campus Arboretum, worked with a team of undergraduate and graduate students to create map the plant locations, manufacture signs, create landing pages and content for each species. The signs, fabricated on campus by the FM Sign Shop were installed this summer and are currently being used by Nature's Notebook citizen scientists in the community. Through this collaboration, we have increased the accessibility of information for both the Campus Arboretum and imporved capacity for data collection with the Nature’s Notebook program. 

Find out more about becoming an Observer with Nature's Notebook Phenology and find a phenology trail location near you. 

Explore the plants in the Joseph Wood Krutch Garden using this Interactive Storymap Tool.

Photos of the Krutch specimens to help you locate them for observation can be found here. 

Get inspired watching this short video of the plants and sounds of the Krutch garden. 

Photo credit: tucsonattractions.com