Characterizing ecosystem phenological diversity and its macroecology with snow cover phenology

Yi Lin,Juha Hyyppä

doi:10.1038/s41598-019-51602-1

Yi Lin, Juha Hyyppä

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-51602-1

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Abstract

One critical challenge of exploring flora phenology is on characterizing ecosystem phenological diversity (EPD), and thus how EPD’s performance is influenced by climate changes has also been an open macro-ecological question. To fill these two gaps, we proposed an innovative method for reflecting EPD, by taking the advantage of the often-classified inverse factor of spatial resolution discrepancy between the used remote sensing datasets of vegetation phenological dates (green-up and brown-up) and snow cover phenological dates (SPDs) (onset and end) around the Arctic, and further, we examined the cross response/feedbacks of the two kinds of EPDs to the two categories of SPDs. We found that the circumpolar green-up and brown-up EPDs both were shrinking, driven more by the delaying of the onset SPDs than the advancing of the end SPDs; North America and North Eurasia performed with inconsistent EPD response/feedbacks to the related SPD anomalies; and further, the EPD-SPD response/feedbacks in some locations exhibited the time-lag effect, e.g., the green-up EPDs made the strongest response to the onset SPDs of two years earlier. Overall, the validated method and the new findings are of implications for improving the phenology modules in Earth system models, and the contributions of the present study have enlightening significance for kicking off the new EPD branch in macrosystem phenological ecology.

Highlights

One critical challenge of exploring flora phenology is on characterizing ecosystem phenological diversity (EPD), and how EPD’s performance is influenced by climate changes has been an open macro-ecological question
By following Rmean, we found that the brown-up EPDs over the whole NH were driven positively by snow cover onsets in a one-OB-year-delayed way (DO-D)
Compared to the currently-mainstreamed researches on attempting to attribute flora phenological changes to long-term temperature trends based on meta-analyses[7] of species-level observations for deriving community-level phenologicial knowledge[12,13,14,15,16], this study directly concentrating on macrosystem phenological ecology by innovatively using the derivations from different remote sensing data[33,34] is relatively rare, accounting for snow cover phenology[27] as another essential climate force[4,28,30]

Summary

Introduction

One critical challenge of exploring flora phenology is on characterizing ecosystem phenological diversity (EPD), and how EPD’s performance is influenced by climate changes has been an open macro-ecological question. Feature, and evolution of phenological diversity, as an important indicator of biodiversity[6], is of extensive significance for understanding of how species, communities, and ecosystems may make response/feedbacks to climate changes[7] To characterize this phenological trait, people proposed specific parameters such as phenological synchrony[4] or asynchrony[5], which are quantified as the consistency or inconsistency between the phenological dates of varying biological functional groups[4,5], respectively. The evidences to date have not drawn a clear picture about how prevalent and large the shifts in phenological synchrony from species, taxonomic groups, to communities have been in response to recent climate changes[7] The knowledge about the macroecological effect[31] of snow cover phenological anomalies on ecosystem phenological diversity (EPD) is still almost void

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Conclusion