One of my first tasks as the Kluane Research Assistant was to set up phenocams in the common garden experiment. Phenocams, or more generally time lapse cameras, take pictures every hour to create a video of what has happened over time. Differences in the timing of life events (phenology) – things like when leaves appear or die – are probably one of the biggest drivers of the difference in growth we are seeing between willow populations. With phenocams we can now track this throughout the whole year!

My first step was to unbox them, which, I have to say was the most time consuming! I was to put up 12 cameras around the garden to monitor certain plots, with another one going to be put in a tree to get an aerial view.

After all was unboxed, it was time for the set-up. The instructions were very clear and allowed for the cameras to be customized to our liking. I inputted the time and date and chose the name for each camera. This information will be displayed at the bottom of each picture when the whole video comes together. Being able to name each camera makes it very easy to differentiate between each camera, especially when we have so many! 

Once the set-ups for all cameras was complete, I headed over to the common garden to put them up. Team Drone, who stopped in Kluane earlier this summer, thankfully put up the posts where I was to attach the cameras. At first I wasn’t too sure how I’d be able to set them up but thankfully each camera came with a connecting band and clasp that I found was long and strong enough to attach each camera securely. The outcome looks pretty good and hopefully the final resulting images will too!

By Izzy

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Our phenocams were purchased thanks to a Dudley Stamp Memorial Award from the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG).