Lutz Eckstein is co-author of a paper presenting a workflow for iPhenology (Fig. 1), i.e., the use of publicly available photo observations to track phenological events at large scales. The paper, which has recently been published open access in the journal Methods in Ecology and Evolution (https://doi.org/10.1111/2041-210X.14114), is led by Yves Klinger (Justus-von-Liebig University Gießen, Germany), who will be visiting Biology at KaU in June 2023. Overall, publicly available citizen science photo observations are suitable to track key phenological events and can thus significantly advance the knowledge on the timing and drivers of plant phenology. In future, integrating the workflow with automated image processing and analysis may enable real-time tracking of plant phenology. To learn more about what sparked the idea for this paper and what may be advantages of working with citizen science photos, see the Methods in Ecology and Evolution blog (https://methodsblog.com/2023/05/22/using-citizen-science-photos-to-perform-phenological-studies/).
