Abstract
Climate change is expected to alter vegetation and carbon cycle processes, with implications for ecosystems. Notably, understanding the sensitivity of vegetation to the anomalies of precipitation and temperature over different land cover classes and the corresponding temporal response is essential for improved climate prediction. In this paper, we analyze vegetation response to hydroclimatic forcings using the Fraction of Absorbed Photosynthetically Active Radiation (FAPAR) derived from SeaWiFS (Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-view Sensor) (1998–2002) and (Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer) (2003–2011) satellite sensors at ∼1-km resolution. Based on land cover and pixel-wise analysis, we quantify the extent of the dependence of the FAPAR and, ultimately, the phenology on the anomalies of precipitation and temperature over Europe. Statistical tests are performed to establish where this correlation may be regarded as statistically significant. Furthermore, we assess a statistical link between the climate variables and a set of phenological metrics defined from FAPAR measurement. Variation in the phenological response to the unusual values of precipitation and temperature can be interpreted as the result of the balanced opposite effects of water and temperature on vegetation processes. Results suggest very different responses for different land cover classes and seasons. Correlation analysis also indicates that European phenology may be quite sensitive to perturbations in precipitation and temperature regimes, such as those induced by climate change.
Highlights
During the last decade, there has been an increasing interest in understanding the interactions between land cover and climate, in order to assess the impacts of climate change on the carbon cycle [1,2,3,4,5,6]
The response of vegetation dynamics, for different land cover types, to precipitation and temperature anomalies is a subject of current climate research [12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19], aimed at understanding how the biosphere interacts with the atmosphere through the carbon, water and energy cycles [20,21,22,23]
Other studies have focused on the vegetation response to events that deviate from the expected patterns by two or more standard deviations: Ciais et al [28] and Gobron et al [29], for example, analyzed the Europe-wide reduction in primary productivity caused by the heat wave and drought of 2003
Summary
There has been an increasing interest in understanding the interactions between land cover ( vegetation) and climate, in order to assess the impacts of climate change on the carbon cycle [1,2,3,4,5,6]. Vegetation plays a role in impacting the carbon cycle, completing a “feedback loop” with the climate [8,9,10,11]. For this reason, the response of vegetation dynamics, for different land cover types, to precipitation and temperature anomalies is a subject of current climate research [12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19], aimed at understanding (and predicting) how the biosphere interacts with the atmosphere through the carbon, water and energy cycles [20,21,22,23]. Reichstein et al [32] addressed the implication of climate extremes on the global terrestrial carbon budget
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