Introduction

Phenology has been used as a proxy for climate and weather throughout human history particularly in relation to agriculture, but only within the last two centuries has it emerged as a science in its own right. Moreover, during the last half of the twentieth century the value of phenological science was at last recognized as an integrative measure of plant and animal responses to climate and other environmental change that can be scaled from a local to global level. Multiple examples, concepts, and applications of phenology have been systematically compiled to create this book. Together, they serve to reemphasize the valuable contribution of phenological researchphenological research, in particular related to environmental change to date, and highlight the urgent need for more data collection, networks, and global collaborations in the future.