Abstract
Global change has led to shifts in phenology, potentially disrupting species interactions such as plant–pollinator relationships. Advances in remote sensing techniques allow one to detect vegetation phenological diversity between different land use types, but it is not clear how this translates to other communities in the ecosystem. Here, we investigated the phenological diversity of the vegetation across a human-altered landscape including urban, agricultural, and natural land use types. We found that the patterns of change in the vegetation indices (EVI and NDVI) of human-altered landscapes are out of synchronization with the phenology in neighboring natural California grassland habitat. Comparing these findings to a spatio-temporal pollinator distribution dataset, EVI and NDVI were significant predictors of total bee abundance, a relationship that improved with time lags. This evidence supports the importance of differences in temporal dynamics between land use types. These findings also highlight the potential to utilize remote sensing data to make predictions for components of biodiversity that have tight vegetation associations, such as pollinators.
Highlights
Increasing temperatures as a result of global climate change have led to shifts in phenology for many species (Hughes, 2000; Walther et al, 2002; Menzel et al, 2006; Parmesan, 2006), and widespread debate over the consequences of critical interaction mismatches (Tylianakis et al, 2008; Hegland et al, 2009; Bartomeus et al, 2011; Willmer, 2012)
We ask whether human-altered landscapes in California grasslands experience phenological diversity that is out of synchrony with that of surrounding natural areas. We explore how these changes in phenology correlate with those of the bee community that depends on floral resources
Natural areas had a large burst of high values in the early spring and trailed off, urban areas were relatively constant, and agricultural areas had two greening peaks, the first at the same time as natural, and the second in the middle of the summer
Summary
Increasing temperatures as a result of global climate change have led to shifts in phenology for many species (Hughes, 2000; Walther et al, 2002; Menzel et al, 2006; Parmesan, 2006), and widespread debate over the consequences of critical interaction mismatches (Tylianakis et al, 2008; Hegland et al, 2009; Bartomeus et al, 2011; Willmer, 2012). Not all phenological change is the direct result of changing climate. Land use change, such as urbanization and agricultural expansion, includes the deliberate introduction of novel plants into communities. These plants, both exotic ornamentals and crops, are often accompanied by watering and supplemental nutrient inputs that extend survival potential in the targeted landscape, leading to different flowering seasons. On a plant community-scale, different land use types can be expected to experience distinct patterns of phenological change.
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