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Ground Truth: A Guide to Tracking Climate Change at Home
Before you read this book, you have homework to do. Grab a notebook, go outside, and find a nearby patch of nature. What do you see, hear, feel, and smell? Are there bugs, birds, squirrels, deer, lizards, frogs, or fish, and what are they doing? What plants are in the vicinity, and in what ways are they growing? What shape are the rocks, what texture is the dirt, and what color are the bodies of water? Does the air feel hot or cold, wet or dry, windy or still? Everything you notice, write it all down.
We know that the Earth’s climate is changing, and that the magnitude of this change is colossal. At the same time, the world outside is still a natural world, and one we can experience on a granular level every day. Ground Truth is a guide to living in this condition of changing nature, to paying attention instead of turning away, and to gathering facts from which a fuller understanding of the natural world can emerge over time.
Featuring detailed guidance for keeping records of the plants, invertebrates, amphibians, birds, and mammals in your neighborhood, this book also ponders the value of everyday observations, probes the connections between seasons and climate change, and traces the history of phenology—the study and timing of natural events—and the uses to which it can be put. An expansive yet accessible book, Ground Truth invites readers to help lay the groundwork for a better understanding of the nature of change itself.
We know that the Earth’s climate is changing, and that the magnitude of this change is colossal. At the same time, the world outside is still a natural world, and one we can experience on a granular level every day. Ground Truth is a guide to living in this condition of changing nature, to paying attention instead of turning away, and to gathering facts from which a fuller understanding of the natural world can emerge over time.
Featuring detailed guidance for keeping records of the plants, invertebrates, amphibians, birds, and mammals in your neighborhood, this book also ponders the value of everyday observations, probes the connections between seasons and climate change, and traces the history of phenology—the study and timing of natural events—and the uses to which it can be put. An expansive yet accessible book, Ground Truth invites readers to help lay the groundwork for a better understanding of the nature of change itself.
240 pages, Paperback
Published June 21, 2018
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94 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
October 11, 2019
“This book engages everyone with something accessible, tangible and actionable.” — Mark Schwartz, blurb, geology professor, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
With many books published about the horrors of climate change, this one brings it home, to your dooryard.
Despite the subtitle, this book is less about tracking climate change and more about tracking the trends of plants, animals and weather. I needed to suss out the practical tips and techniques from the narrative.
Mark Hineline grew alarmed about global warming when Bill McKibben published The End of Nature thirty years ago, which gave a framework. His concern deepened six years later when he taught a course about the history of environmentalism at UC-San Diego, which included readings from Henry David Thoreau and Aldo Leopold.
Along that journey, Hineline encountered phenology, the observation and study of biological cycles with cues in climates and seasons. Seasonality deals with the physical cycle over a year while phenology deals with annual biological cycles.
This book is about climate change, seasons and phenology.
Part one introduces phenology by keeping records and making observations to help us understand our place in nature. Chapter five offers quick guidelines to measure changes in the local landscape. Hineline wants to whet appetites and offer guidance. To settle the confusion, Hineline explains that scientists track weather records on a revolving thirty-year timeline but track climate over generations.
Thomas Jefferson and Henry David Thoreau made phenological observations. The authors of Civil DisobedienceThe Overstory and the Declaration of Independence kept journals of phenology. Writing notes about the first bloom was common as a personal interaction with the natural world.
Aldo Leopold began his shack journal seventy years ago. He wrote in one entry that the European white birch had just spent its pollen, labeling his note as “phenology.” His notes, as a field scientist, grew over a dozen years into hundreds of pages and thousands of observations. The wisdom from these notes became the seasonal essays at the front of the Sand County Almanac. The phenologist in Leopold emerged in the midthirties, after he joined the faculty at the University of Wisconsin.
By chapter four, we begin to pick up some practical ideas. A useful phenological observation includes these elements: identification and description of the plant or animal, the date, time and place. Use a camera to get close and make a photographic record of your plants. An observation becomes useful for science by visiting the site every day or two. One way to learn about plants: Spend time with people who know their plants.
Chart the developments for a year. Start with a few this year, add more next year. You will develop an appreciation of the understory. Along the way, you may enjoy this five-star book that won a Pulitzer: The Overstory.
Beyond phenology, as we live through the Anthropocene, examine your carbon footprint by taking inventory of the energy you use, Hineline urges. Individual actions add up to collective actions.
The New York Times Book Review wrote last month that three percent of us making a change can make a difference. The first Earth Day fifty years ago made a lifelong impact, leading me to rethink my food, energy and transportation. I eat low on the food chain and take public transit five days a week, driving a Honda Fit for errands and groceries, all the while remaining aware of what we now call the carbon footprint.
Even for those of us who came out of the eco movements of the sixties, this book offers actions to take, making a change to make a difference.
With many books published about the horrors of climate change, this one brings it home, to your dooryard.
Despite the subtitle, this book is less about tracking climate change and more about tracking the trends of plants, animals and weather. I needed to suss out the practical tips and techniques from the narrative.
Mark Hineline grew alarmed about global warming when Bill McKibben published The End of Nature thirty years ago, which gave a framework. His concern deepened six years later when he taught a course about the history of environmentalism at UC-San Diego, which included readings from Henry David Thoreau and Aldo Leopold.
Along that journey, Hineline encountered phenology, the observation and study of biological cycles with cues in climates and seasons. Seasonality deals with the physical cycle over a year while phenology deals with annual biological cycles.
This book is about climate change, seasons and phenology.
Part one introduces phenology by keeping records and making observations to help us understand our place in nature. Chapter five offers quick guidelines to measure changes in the local landscape. Hineline wants to whet appetites and offer guidance. To settle the confusion, Hineline explains that scientists track weather records on a revolving thirty-year timeline but track climate over generations.
Thomas Jefferson and Henry David Thoreau made phenological observations. The authors of Civil DisobedienceThe Overstory and the Declaration of Independence kept journals of phenology. Writing notes about the first bloom was common as a personal interaction with the natural world.
Aldo Leopold began his shack journal seventy years ago. He wrote in one entry that the European white birch had just spent its pollen, labeling his note as “phenology.” His notes, as a field scientist, grew over a dozen years into hundreds of pages and thousands of observations. The wisdom from these notes became the seasonal essays at the front of the Sand County Almanac. The phenologist in Leopold emerged in the midthirties, after he joined the faculty at the University of Wisconsin.
By chapter four, we begin to pick up some practical ideas. A useful phenological observation includes these elements: identification and description of the plant or animal, the date, time and place. Use a camera to get close and make a photographic record of your plants. An observation becomes useful for science by visiting the site every day or two. One way to learn about plants: Spend time with people who know their plants.
Chart the developments for a year. Start with a few this year, add more next year. You will develop an appreciation of the understory. Along the way, you may enjoy this five-star book that won a Pulitzer: The Overstory.
Beyond phenology, as we live through the Anthropocene, examine your carbon footprint by taking inventory of the energy you use, Hineline urges. Individual actions add up to collective actions.
The New York Times Book Review wrote last month that three percent of us making a change can make a difference. The first Earth Day fifty years ago made a lifelong impact, leading me to rethink my food, energy and transportation. I eat low on the food chain and take public transit five days a week, driving a Honda Fit for errands and groceries, all the while remaining aware of what we now call the carbon footprint.
Even for those of us who came out of the eco movements of the sixties, this book offers actions to take, making a change to make a difference.
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June 28, 2019577.22 H6627 2018
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March 2, 2019Gave up yesterday. If I were interested in taking notes of observations of nature, just for my own info, for decades then it'd be something to pursue.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews