phenology
[fi-nol-uh-jee]
1. the science dealing with the influence of climate on the recurrence of such annual phenomena of animal and plant life as budding and bird migrations.
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“That’s not right.” Dr. Leon Hammil
said.
He adjusted his glasses as he
looked at the screen. They never quite
fit right, and had a nasty habit of distorting certain things if they fell at
the wrong angle. But, as he quickly
found out, they were not the cause of the oddities he was seeing.
“Hey Phil, come take a look at
this.” Leon said. He wheeled his chair
to the side to allow his colleague, Dr. Phil Wilcox, to see the screen.
“What am I looking at?” Phil asked.
“The latest data on avian migratory
patterns.” Leon replied. “They’re off.”
“Which ones and by how much?”
“All of them, and by just over a
hundred miles.”
“That can’t be right.”
Phil scrunched his nose and
carefully examined the data. It took him
a few minutes to examine the layout of charts, graphs and tables that had been
arraigned on Leon’s computer screen.
Sure enough, every single migrating bird in the country was migrating to
areas a hundred miles away from where they had in previous years.
“That’s not right.” Phil said,
echoing Leon’s thoughts on the matter.
“What do you make of it?” Leon
asked. “Maybe climate change?”
“No, that can’t be it. If that was the case, we’d be seeing a
gradual shift over time. This is
sudden. It can’t be due to climate
change.”
“So then, if that isn’t it, then
what?”
“I have no idea. Have you checked insect migration?”
“Not yet. Hold on, I’ll do that now.”
Leon gently nudged his colleague
out of the way so he could work. His
fingers flew over the keys in well practiced motions that would call up the
requested data. Once it was up, both men
examined it. It showed the exact same
results as the birds. The insects were
simply not going where they should have.
“This is going to be bad, isn’t it?”
Leon asked.
Phil sighed. “Very bad.
Just birds or insects changing their migration habits to such an extent
would be very bad for their intended ecosystems, but both at once? There will definitely be crops that don’t
grow, and other animal species will either go hungry or go out of control.”
“So, what should we do about this?”
“What can we do? We’re just the scientists that monitor these
things. It’s not like we have any power
to actually do anything about it. We
just have to tell the people who can do something and hope they actually
listen.”
“Well, we can at least try and
figure out why this is happening. I
mean, this is what we do, right?” Leon
looked at Phil, hoping the older scientist would have some insight into what
they would be doing from now on.
“We can hope to find
something. But it won’t be easy, I hope
you know that, right?”
“Yeah, I know. So, where should we start?”
“Honestly? I have no idea. I guess we just keep going over the data and
hope to find something.”
“Well then, let’s get started.”
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Yeah, this one was a bit tough. I had no idea what I was going to write, so yeah, this probably isn't the best thing I've ever written.
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