1. Reporting Plant Observations
Training Materials
Reporting Plant Observations
This mini-presentation will guide you through the steps of recording your observations of plants at your site. There is a separate training presentation for reporting animal observations at your site, however, many of the steps overlap. If you are observing both plants and animals at your site, you may wish to also view the presentation on reporting animal observations.
This information is also available on USA-NPN website at

2. www.usanpn.org/participate/guidelines Select a site
Select plant and animal species
Select individual plants
Mark your site and plants
Record your observations of animals
Record your observations of plants
Report your data online
In this presentation, we’ll focus reporting your observations online using Nature’s Notebook. 2

3.
A link to the Nature’s Notebook online interface can be found in the upper right corner on all pages of the USA-NPN website, at

4.
You can also use the “Log in” button to log into your Nature’s Notebook account from any page on the USA-NPN website.

5. The first time you visit the Nature’s Notebook online data entry system, you’ll need to register yourself. To create a new account, click the “Create new account” tab on the User account page.

6. Enter a username and email address
Enter a username and address. You can use your address as your username.

7. Then fill out the participant information – your name and address
Then fill out the participant information – your name and address. All the fields marked with a red asterisk are required.

8. If you are observing as part of a partner organization, select the organization’s name in the Partner Organization drop down.

9. If you would like to participate in the USA-NPN cloned plants project and monitor a cloned lilac or dogwood, you can request one from the program coordinator here.

10.
You can learn more about the cloned plants project at

11. Finally, answer the validation question, and click the “Create new account” button.

12. Once you are logged into Nature’s Notebook, you will have a dashboard that looks like this.

13. Click on “Nature’s Notebook” on the left-side menu.

14. This will bring you to your Nature’s Notebook home page
This will bring you to your Nature’s Notebook home page. Using the navigation at the top, you can…

15. Use the “Nature’s Notebook Home” to return to this page. You can also…

16. Add a new site,

17. Add new plants,

18. Add animals to your checklist,

19. And enter observations.
Note that at the moment, the options to add plants, add animals, and enter observations are not available to me. That is because I haven’t yet registered a site. Once you have registered a site, you can then add plants and animals to it and then submit observations.

20. Let’s add a site now.

21. When you ‘add a new site’ you…

22. … first enter the name of the site – like ‘my backyard’ or ‘Bear Mountain trailhead’. Then, there are three ways you can enter location information for your site –

23. …by adding an address, which will be automatically geo-located on the map,…

24. …by selecting your site on the map, …

25. …or by typing the latitude and longitude into the boxes below the map.

26. Note the help icon on all of these pages.

27. We also encourage you to provide additional site information.

28. Please note the separate tabs, separating site questions that are specific to whether you are observing plants

29. Or animals.

30. After you have filled your answers to the site questions, click the “Create site” button to to create your new site and return to the home page.

31. You should see notification that your site was successfully added to your account.

32. If you return to your home page, by clicking “Nature’s Notebook Home” on the left-side navigation,

33. You will see that your site now appears in your list of “My Sites”
You will see that your site now appears in your list of “My Sites”. You can now add plants or animals to your site.

34. You can add a plant by clicking on “Add or Edit Plants” in the process navigation menu at the top of the page, or…

35. By clicking on the “Add or Edit Plants” button below “My Plants & Animals”.

36. my yard
Clicking either of these “Add or Edit Plants” buttons will take you to the “Add or Edit Plants” page.

37. my yard
To register a plant at your site, first ensure that the site to which you would like to register the plants is selected in the “Site” drop-down box at the top.

38. Next, begin typing the common or scientific name of the plant you’d like to register,

40. and you’ll be offered suggested plant species with pictures
and you’ll be offered suggested plant species with pictures. Click on one of the suggestions to select it.

41. Your plant will automatically be given a Nickname, you can keep this default, or change the name to whatever you want it to be. The purpose of a nickname is for you to distinguish between different individuals in case you register more than one individual of the same species.

42. Next, you are prompted to report on the…

43. Shade status of the plant,

44. Whether the plant is growing wild or was planted by humans,

45. Whether the plant is watered regularly,

46. Whether the plant is fertilized,

47. And if the plant was planted by humans, when it was planted, if known.

48. Note the Help icon next to each of these questions.

49. Hovering over any of these Help icons will provide more information about this question.

50. For my red maple, I filled in the boxes with the appropriate information. My red maple is in…

51. Mostly sun,

52. Is not wild because I planted it a few years ago,

53. Is watered,

54. And is fertilized.

55. I recall that we planted it in 2008 but can’t recall the exact date, so only fill in 2008 for the planting date.

56. Once you’re finished entering information about your plant,

57. click the “Save this plant” button.

58. Upon returning to the Nature’s Notebook home page, you will see that your plant has been registered to your site.

59. In this case, my plant nicknamed “red maple-1”

60. Has been added to my site called “My Back Yard”.

61. Note that when you highlight a plant

62. The details for this plant appear to the right.

63. From here, you can quickly return to the species profile page for this species, to review the phenophases you are asked to observe.

64. You can also create a datasheet packet
You can also create a datasheet packet. A datasheet packet includes a phenophase datasheet for every plant and animal you have registered for your site, a cover sheet, and an animal checklist, if you are observing animals. After clicking on “Create Datasheets” you will be asked which datasheets you wish to print.

65. To create a full datasheet packet click on “Create All Datasheets”

66. Then click “Create Datasheets” to create your PDF datasheet packet
You will want to click this button to create the files, and then print them before going out into the field for the first time to ensure you have all of the datasheets you will need.

67. Clicking on the “create datasheet packet” button provided me with copies of a cover sheet and a phenophase datasheet for my red maple. If I had registered additional plants to this site, my packet would have also included phenophase datasheets for each of these plants. If I had registered animals, it would have included an Animal Checklist and phenophase datasheets for each of the animal species on my checklist.

68. Here is a copy of my datasheet for the red maple I just registered
Here is a copy of my datasheet for the red maple I just registered. Note that

69. you will need to fill in Species name,

70. Plant nickname,

71. Site name,

72. Year,

73. And your name.

74. Use this datasheet to record your observations of the plant
Use this datasheet to record your observations of the plant. We recommend taking both the datasheet and a print out of the full phenophase descriptions when you go outside. You may collect weeks or months of data on the datasheet and submit it all at once, or submit each day’s worth of observations online as you progress through the season. However, the sooner you enter your data online, the sooner you and others will see your data in our online visualization tools.

75. When you fill up your phenophase datasheets, you can print more individual datasheets for your selected plant using the “Create Single Datasheet” button.

76. You can also print out individual Cover Sheets using the “Create Datasheets” button…

77. Then select “Create Cover Sheet”.

78. Once you’re ready to submit observations online,

79. click the “Enter Observation Data” button.

80. You will be taken to the “Enter Observations” form.

81. Your plants will appear in expandable menus
Your plants will appear in expandable menus. If you click on a plant name here,

82. You will be provided with the data entry table for this plant.

83. Each column represents a day’s worth of observations.

84. You can hover over the phenophase name (breaking leaf buds, for example) to review the detailed definition of the phenophase.

85. To enter a day’s worth of observations, click the calendar icon at the top of the column to choose the date of the observations you want to enter.

86. Your date will then be displayed at the top of the column.

87. Next, click “Y” for any phenophase that was occurring on that date,

88. “N” for those that were not.

89. And click “?” for any phenophases for which you were uncertain if the phenophase was occurring.

90. If you did not check for a particular phenophase at all, do not click any of the choices and leave them all uncircled.

91. For those phenophases that are occurring you will often be asked to give intensity estimations in the “What value?” menu on the right side of the column.

92. As an example, if I observe that my red maple is almost fully leafed out on this date, with no more breaking leaf buds,

93. I will click “N” for ‘breaking leaf buds’

94. And “Y” for leaves.

95. Then I will select an option from the “What value
Then I will select an option from the “What value?” drop-down menu next to the ‘leaves’ phenophase.

96. In this case, the canopy of my red maple is almost completely filled in with leaves, so I select ‘95% or more’. If you hover over the blue information icon to the left of the menu, you will see more detailed information for the available options.

97. Most of the leaves on my red maple may have grown to their full size, and therefore are no longer increasing in size. But I am not completely sure of this,

98. so I click “?”. The next time I make my observations, I will see if they get any larger. If they do, then I will come back to this date column and click “Y” for this phenophase to report that they were indeed still increasing in size, and resubmit my observation for this date. If they are not any larger on my next observation, I can come back to this date column and click “N” for this phenophase because they had already stopped increasing in size on this date.

99. I do not see any leaves with late season color

100. Or falling leaves, so I click “N” for both
Or falling leaves, so I click “N” for both. If you click “N” for a phenophase, do not select any intensity measure from the “What value?” menu for that phenophase.

101. I do not see flowers

102. So click “N” for all of the flower phenophases.

103. And I see no fruits, so click “N” for ‘fruits’ and ‘ripe fruits’
And I see no fruits, so click “N” for ‘fruits’ and ‘ripe fruits’. Since I saw no fruits on my red maple at my last visit

104. I also click “N” for ‘recent fruit drop’

105. Add comments if you have one that pertains to the plant on that day – for example, that it was covered with frost, or that some of the leaves had been eaten by a caterpillar.

106. Once you have entered all of your observations, you can click the “Submit observations” button.

107. This will save your data
This will save your data. You should see a message that your observations were successfully saved above the “Submit observations’ button.

108. Use the arrows at the bottom to scroll back and forth through time
Use the arrows at the bottom to scroll back and forth through time. You can edit your previous observations this way, if you need to make changes.

109. From here, you can enter further observations, or use the top navigation menu to navigate to other functions within Nature’s Notebook.

110. Please note the Help icon that is available on every page to help you in case you get stuck.

111. This concludes our presentation on reporting your observations of plant phenology. Thank you for your time and interest in our program!