Woodland Trust - Climate Change in Your Garden

Brief:

The UK Phenology Project aims to investigate the effect that climate change is having on our environment by tracking the timing of the seasons by observing natural events such as snowdrop flowering and the first sighting of frog spawn. The project has attracted a wide range of recorders from across the UK and has received unprecedented national media interest.

The brief for this project was to develop an interactive digital resource to help illustrate how data recorded by the public is used by scientists in their climate change research.

As developers of the Phenology website through which data is captured, we were asked to create six interactive stories to illustrate the findings of the project.

We decided to create six interactive stories, aimed at learners of any age. Each story is based on a key scientific concept and uses real data to build up a picture of our changing climate. All of the stories are located in an interactive spring garden, which you can be explored to discover the stories.

Internova's task was to work with scientists and the Woodland Trust education team, to communicate the message through rich, engaging stories containing accurate information and data.

Internova provided funding for this project, and also helped to raise further funding from COPUS and EM Media.

Solution:

Each of the six stories has its own unique flavour and contains a rich variety of original photography, animation, live data interaction and narration by meteorologist Michael Fish (senior meteorologist and BBC weather forecaster).

These elements work together to enrich the user experience by bringing the data to life and help people to understand the effects of our changing climate on our natural world.

One example story is 'A Frog's Tale' and is about the early sighting of frog spawn and the consequences of early spawning. The story includes rich animation and imported data from the previous year's frog spawn recordings and a live data tracking map for current recordings.

The richness of the stories provides endless possibilities for further extensions to the project and the impetus to encourage people to sign up and get involved in recording natural events.

The project has received a positive review in BBC Wildlife magazine and many congratulatory emails such as:

" I have to say that I think that they are superb - I loved the garden is hugely impressive."

"Love the interactive garden: very clear presentation of information and a good range."

The project was showcased at National Science Week March 2004 and has been (and still is) widely publicised through the UK Phenology Network and associated web sites. Most recently the BBC has included their garden within their website for BBC/Woodland Trust 2005 Springwatch campaign - http://www.bbc.co.uk/springwatch

Visit the garden: http://www.phenology.org.uk/garden/