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every year farms and fields play host to

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a symphony of sorts

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pollination the springtime syncopation

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of flowering plants and the animals who

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feast on the nectar and pollen they

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over millennia pollinators like

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honeybees have evolved a well time dance

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with plants but now plants may be

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changing their tune spring Greenup when

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plants wake from winter and sprout

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leaves it's such a global phenomenon

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that nasa satellites can see it from

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space sensors such as modis on NASA's

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Aqua and Terra satellites can show us

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how green our planet is throughout the

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year and they've captured something

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strange in the northern US a spring

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Greenup is starting about a half day

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earlier each year the likely cause our

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warming climate but is pollination also

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moving earlier the images can't detect

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individual flowers so scientists have

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NASA research scientist Wayne is a Asst

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spearheads a special team gathering data

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directly in the field they're the

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honeybees in his Maryland backyard

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honeybees are great David collectors for

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understanding processes of pollination

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bees fly two and a half miles in all

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directions

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to scout for 4 D forage and bring back

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pollen and nectar and so therefore they

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sample a very large range of

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environments by weighing the hives Wayne

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can detect when nectar peaks and ebbs

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each year during the winter the hive

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loses weight as they eat the honey to

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feed their babies and keep warm and then

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when plants start blooming in abundance

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the hive starts gaining weight it can

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gain a tremendous amount of weight I've

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Wayne's been keeping tabs on his bees

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for less than 20 years but in that time

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pollination has moved more than 10 days

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earlier that's completely in sync with

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what the satellite data record shows the

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world here hitting greener earlier in

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if we have a few scale hive measurements

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with the wall-to-wall coverage of the

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satellite we can then extrapolate those

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scale hive measurements of when the

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nectar flows occur to very large areas

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of the country now to get a bees eye

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perspective of how pollination is

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changing in very different environments

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say deserts or mountains Wayne's doing a

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little networking honeybee net is a

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network of citizen scientists beekeepers

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that volunteered to weigh their hives to

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give us more data points to see how the

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nectar flows are changing in all

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different parts of the country

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if pollination dates keep creeping

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forward plants and pollinators could

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currently young bees are able to grow

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and get out on the hunt by the time

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but if plants bloom before bees are

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ready both miss out the plants don't get

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pollinated and the bees go hungry but

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NASA satellites can help us understand

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how climate change might affect what's

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on our dinner table

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modern agriculture requires bees as part

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of the production it's as mandatory for

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food production as is pieces of

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irrigation pipe and fuel for tractors so

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if we're to understand the impact of

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climate change on our ecosystems we must

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understand how this plant pollinator