Project BudBurst is a national field campaign for citizen scientists designed to engage the public in the collection of important climate change data based on the timing of leafing and flowering of trees and flowers. BudBurst participants take careful observations of the phenological events such as the first bud burst, first leafing, first flower, and seed or fruit dispersal of a diversity of tree and flower species, including weeds and ornamentals.  The citizen science observations and records are reported into the BudBurst data base. 

Thousands of citizen scientists participated in the inaugural pilot test of Project BudBurst in 2007 and as a result useful data was collected in a consistent way across the country. Scientists can use this data to learn about the responses of individual plant species to climatic variation locally, regionally, and nationally, and to detect longer-term impacts of climate change by comparing with historical data.  The enthusiastic response and robust participation in the 2007 pilot effort made it clear that there was sufficient interest from the American public to expand Project BudBurst in 2008!