Global warming is increasing the discrepancy between green (actual) and thermal (potential) seasons of temperate trees

Over the past decades, global warming has led to a lengthening of the time window during which temperatures remain favorable for carbon assimilation and tree growth, resulting in a lengthening of the green season. The extent to which forest green seasons have tracked the lengthening of this favorabl...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Fu, Yongshuo H.|||0000-0002-9761-5292, Geng, Xiaojun|||0000-0002-1064-1739, Chen, Shouzhi, Wu, Hao, Hao, Fanghua, Zhang, Xuan, Wu, Zhaofei, Zhang, Jing, Tang, Jing|||0000-0001-7961-8214, Vitasse, Yann|||0000-0002-7454-505X, Zohner, Constantin|||0000-0002-8302-4854, Janssens, Ivan|||0000-0002-5705-1787, Stenseth, Nils Chr, Peñuelas, Josep|||0000-0002-7215-0150
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2023
País:España
Institución:Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Repositorio:Dipòsit Digital de Documents de la UAB
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:ddd.uab.cat:289890
Acceso en línea:https://ddd.uab.cat/record/289890
https://dx.doi.org/urn:doi:10.1111/gcb.16545
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Climatic warming
Thermal season
Green season
Spring leaf-out
Autumnal foliar senescence
Descripción
Sumario:Over the past decades, global warming has led to a lengthening of the time window during which temperatures remain favorable for carbon assimilation and tree growth, resulting in a lengthening of the green season. The extent to which forest green seasons have tracked the lengthening of this favorable period under climate warming, however, has not been quantified to date. Here, we used remote sensing data and long-term ground observations of leaf-out and coloration for six dominant species of European trees at 1773 sites, for a total of 6060 species-site combinations, during 1980-2016 and found that actual green season extensions (GS: 3.1 ± 0.1 day decade-1) lag four times behind extensions of the potential thermal season (TS: 12.6 ± 0.1 day decade-1). Similar but less pronounced differences were obtained using satellite-derived vegetation phenology observations, that is, a lengthening of 4.4 ± 0.13 and 7.5 ± 0.13 day decade-1 for GS and TS, respectively. This difference was mainly driven by the larger advance in the onset of the thermal season compared to the actual advance of leaf-out dates (spring mismatch: 7.2 ± 0.1 day decade-1), but to a less extent caused by a phenological mismatch between GS and TS in autumn (2.4 ± 0.1 day decade-1). Our results showed that forest trees do not linearly track the new thermal window extension, indicating more complex interactions between winter and spring temperatures and photoperiod and a justification of demonstrating that using more sophisticated models that include the influence of chilling and photoperiod is needed to accurately predict spring phenological changes under warmer climate. They urge caution if such mechanisms are omitted to predict, for example, how vegetative health and growth, species distribution and crop yields will change in the future.