Climate Chaser Mobile Lab. Photo: Christine Baeumler
Recording stories. Photo: Northern Spark
Our citizen science project, Backyard Phenology, focuses on place-based observation and study of seasons and cycles of the natural world. (Phenology involves observation of the timing of phenomena such as leaf expansion and flowering of plants, and of weather events such as frosts and extreme storms). It is simple to practice and well suited to citizen science: participants are invited to monitor local effects of climate change through the use of an issued calendar. The Climate Chaser Mobile Phenology Lab will return to Northern Spark 2017. The Climate Chaser Mobile Phenology Lab will alternate between a space to listen to recorded climate change stories gathered over the past year as well as share stories of environmental observations.
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Christine Baeumler is an environmental artist and Associate Professor at the University of Minnesota who explores the potential of art as a catalyst to increase awareness about environmental issues and to facilitate stewardship. Her community–based environmental practice is collaborative and involves the ecological interventions on urban sites with attention to increasing biodiversity, providing habitat, improving water quality and the aesthetic dimension.
Randy Duerr is the sound editor. Duerr has assisted us over the past year to record almost two hundred climate stories in the Climate Chaser Phenology Lab. He will work with Rachel Jendrzejewski, the BYP team and collaborators to edit the climate stories and integrate with natural sound.
Kate Flick is a PhD Student in Natural Resource Science and Management at the University of Minnesota interested in healing landscapes. She combines social-¬‐ecological lenses and multiple ways of knowing to complex issues of Place identity in the past, present, and future. Her work looks at participatory education methods that engage people in culturally relevant layers of Place.
Rebecca A. Montgomery is Associate Professor in the Department of Forest Resources in the College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences at the University of Minnesota. Montgomery’s research interests include forest ecology, plant functional ecology and global change. Currently, her core research addresses the effects of project climate change (warming, drought, elevated CO2) on various North American ecosystems including: temperate/boreal forests, prairie grasslands and peatlands. She leads the Minnesota Phenology Network.
Beth Mercer-Taylor is the sustainability education coordinator at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. She administers the Sustainability Studies Minor, an interdisciplinary, freestanding program with nearly 200 undergraduates enrolled. Her work involves recruiting and advising students, creating community-¬building activities, coordinating the efforts of the curriculum committee that oversees the minor’s academic program, and leading new initiatives related to sustainability on campus.
Rachel Jendrzejewski is a writer and interdisciplinary artist based in Minneapolis who works throughout the U.S. and internationally, most often investigating awareness, embodied experience, and the complexities of “community.” She frequently collaborates with dancers, visual artists, musicians, fellow writers, and alleged non- artists to explore new performative vocabularies. In recent years, these collaborations have increasingly addressed climate change, investigating individual versus collective habits of thinking and how performance can engage with the vastness of the subject in new and meaningful ways.
Graphic Design: This is Folly – Holly Robbins and John Moes
Fabrication: THREESEVEN – Troy Gallas and Patrick McKennan
Illustration: Julie Renee’ Benda