Earlier-season vegetation has greater temperature sensitivity of spring phenology in northern hemisphere

PLoS One. 2014 Feb 5;9(2):e88178. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0088178. eCollection 2014.

Abstract

In recent decades, satellite-derived start of vegetation growing season (SOS) has advanced in many northern temperate and boreal regions. Both the magnitude of temperature increase and the sensitivity of the greenness phenology to temperature-the phenological change per unit temperature-can contribute the advancement. To determine the temperature-sensitivity, we examined the satellite-derived SOS and the potentially effective pre-season temperature (T eff) from 1982 to 2008 for vegetated land between 30°N and 80°N. Earlier season vegetation types, i.e., the vegetation types with earlier SOSmean (mean SOS for 1982-2008), showed greater advancement of SOS during 1982-2008. The advancing rate of SOS against year was also greater in the vegetation with earlier SOSmean even the T eff increase was the same. These results suggest that the spring phenology of vegetation may have high temperature sensitivity in a warmer area. Therefore it is important to consider temperature-sensitivity in assessing broad-scale phenological responses to climatic warming. Further studies are needed to explore the mechanisms and ecological consequences of the temperature-sensitivity of start of growing season in a warming climate.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Climate
  • Ecosystem
  • Global Warming*
  • Plant Development*
  • Seasons
  • Temperature

Grants and funding

The study was supported by the following research funds: a grant from the National Natural Science Foundation of China to M. Shen (Grant No. 41201459), “Integrated assessment and prediction of carbon dynamics in relation to climate changes in grasslands on the Qinghai-Tibetan and Mongolian Plateaus”, conducted under the auspices of the Strategic Japanese–Chinese Cooperative Program on Climate Change, funded by the Japan Science and Technology Agency; funds from the Centre for Global Environmental Research of the National Institute for Environmental Studies, Japan; a grant from the “Strategic Priority Research Program (B)” of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant No. XDB03030404); and a project supported by the State Key Laboratory of Earth Surface Processes and Resource Ecology, Beijing Normal University. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.