API waking up

Phenological Mismatch Observatory

Tracking the breaking of nature's timing — in real time

Oak trees have leafed out 14 days earlier since 1980. Caterpillars have advanced only 3 days. Great tit chicks now hatch after the caterpillar peak — and starve. This is phenological mismatch: climate change breaking the timing contracts between interdependent species. No publicly accessible tool existed to observe it globally. Until now.

Explore species pairsRead the methodology

Section 02

How it works

01

We observe

iNaturalist and eBird: over 200 million citizen science observations ingested weekly and filtered to research-grade phenophase records.

02

We estimate

A Weibull-parameterized phenological estimator (Belitz et al. 2020) computes peak timing for each species within every 50 km spatial cell.

03

We measure the gap

The mismatch index is the absolute difference in peak timing between dependent species. Validated against 32 years of PEP725 ground-truth stations — Oak MAE 6.7 days, Cherry MAE 2.5 days.

Section 03

Species pairs explorer

Each pair is an ecological dependency with documented timing coupling. Select one to visualise its mismatch.

Section 04

Mismatch visualiser

Select a species pair above to begin.

Awaiting pair selection

Reference baselines — PEP725 ground truth: Oak 119.6 DOY · Cherry 112.8 DOY

Section 05

Methodology

  • iNaturalist — research-grade occurrence records, CC-BY licensed, weekly ingest.
  • eBird — Cornell Lab of Ornithology, avian arrival and breeding records.
  • PEP725 — Pan-European Phenology database, German station network used as ground truth for validation (32 years).
  • ERA5 — Copernicus reanalysis climate covariates for spatial context.