PhenoCam Project

Phenology is the study of biological events that have reoccurring cycles.

These cycles are influenced by both abiotic and biotic factors, and the interactions between these factors.

PhenoCam Network

The PhenoCam network consists of more than 200 web-enabled cameras (PhenoCams) located at various landscapes across the U.S., and other parts of the world. The PhenoCams take an image every 30 minutes and upload the images to the PhenoCam Network’s Website. All PhenoCams collect images that are sensitive to reflective visible radiation, and some have near-infrared sensing capabilities.

You can also access the PhenoCam Network data via the ORNL DAAC

UND's PhenoCam Site

The North Dakota View PhenoCam site is located on the University of North Dakota’s Oakville Prairie Biological Field Station.

• The Oakville Prairie comprises 960 acres of native prairie grassland with a high water table and alkaline soil. Along with the PhenoCam, the site has been equipped with a vegetation height measuring pole, a calibration panel, and a weather station.
• Every 15 minutes, the weather station collects solar radiation, air temperature, relative humidity, dew point, air pressure, wind speed and direction, rainfall, soil moisture, soil temperature at five depths, and leaf wetness.
• The Oakville PhenoCam relies on two solar panels and a wind turbine to charge a 12-volt marine battery, and a cellular modem for Internet connectivity.

About the PhenoCam Project

This project was supported by Cooperative Agreement No. G11AC20461 to Colorado State University, and sub-award G-28580-1 to AmericaView from the U.S. Geological Survey. The Oakville PhenoCam project is a joint effort between the UND departments of Geography & GIS and Biology.

Recent Data

Color Image

VIEW color photo gallery

Infrared Image

 view infrared photo gallery

GCC (Green Chromatic Coordinate) Timeseries Plot

 View GCC Timeseries Infographic

Weather Data at Oakville

WEather dATa at OAKVILLE

Contributing Students

Graduate and undergraduate students of Geography who have worked on the assembly, deployment, and operation of the North Dakota View PhenoCam are:

• Bradley Barger
• Mitchell Braget
• Morgen Burke
• Lawrence Burkett
• Anai Caparo Bellido 
• Earl Klug
• Eohjin Lee

Publications

Burke, Morgen WV, Bradley C. Rundquist, and Anaí Caparó Bellido. "Modelling vegetation phenology at six field stations within the US Great Plains: constructing a 38-year timeseries of GCC, VCI, NDVI, and EVI2 using PhenoCam imagery and DAYMET meteorological records." Theoretical and Applied Climatology (2024): 1-17. DOI

Burke, Morgen WV, and Bradley C. Rundquist. "Scaling Phenocam GCC, NDVI, and EVI2 with Harmonized Landsat-Sentinel using Gaussian Processes." Agricultural and Forest Meteorology 300 (2021): 108316. DOI

Caparó Bellido, Anaí, and Bradley C. Rundquist. "Semi-Automatic Fractional Snow Cover Monitoring from Near-Surface Remote Sensing in Grassland." Remote Sensing 13, no. 11 (2021): 2045. DOI

Yuke, Zhou. "Greenness index from phenocams performs well in linking climatic factors and monitoring grass phenology in a temperate prairie ecosystem." Journal of Resources and Ecology 10, no. 5 (2019): 481-493. DOI

Zhou, Qiang, Jennifer Rover, Jesslyn Brown, Bruce Worstell, Danny Howard, Zhuoting Wu, Alisa L. Gallant, Bradley Rundquist, and Morgen Burke. "Monitoring landscape dynamics in central us grasslands with harmonized Landsat-8 and Sentinel-2 time series data." Remote Sensing 11, no. 3 (2019): 328. DOI

Contact

For more information about the PhenoCam project, please contact: