Abstract
Observations of changes in phenology have provided some of the strongest signals of the effects of climate change on terrestrial ecosystems. The International Tundra Experiment (ITEX), initiated in the early 1990s, established a common protocol to measure plant phenology in tundra study areas across the globe. Today, this valuable collection of phenology measurements depicts the responses of plants at the colder extremes of our planet to experimental and ambient changes in temperature over the past decades. The database contains 150 434 phenology observations of 278 plant species taken at 28 study areas for periods of 1–26 years. Here we describe the full data set to increase the visibility and use of these data in global analyses and to invite phenology data contributions from underrepresented tundra locations. Portions of this tundra phenology database have been used in three recent syntheses, some data sets are expanded, others are from entirely new study areas, and the entirety of these data are now available at the Polar Data Catalogue ( https://doi.org/10.21963/13215 ).
Highlights
Changes in phenology are some of the most well-recorded and observable biotic responses to climate change (Parmesan and Yohe, 2003; Thackeray et al, 2016; Menzel et al, 2020), and phenology observations provide important information for predicting ecosystem response to future climatic change (Diez et al, 2012)
The database contains 150,434 phenology observations of 278 plant species taken at 28 study areas for periods of 1 to 26 years
Some of the first and most frequent measurements taken at International Tundra Experiment (ITEX) sites were plant phenology observations, and the value of these coordinated observations - taken using a common protocol across sites in similar experimental conditions - has continued to grow over time (Arft et al, 1999; Prevéy et al, 2019)
Summary
Changes in phenology are some of the most well-recorded and observable biotic responses to climate change (Parmesan and Yohe, 2003; Thackeray et al, 2016; Menzel et al, 2020), and phenology observations provide important information for predicting ecosystem response to future climatic change (Diez et al, 2012). Phenology data from ITEX experiments have supported numerous publications, including: single site studies (Molau et al, 2005; Bjorkman et al, 2015; Hollister et al, 2015; Panchen and Gorelick, 2015; Semenchuk et al, 2016), comparisons of single taxa across sites (Alatalo and Totland, 1997; Jones et al, 1997; Lévesque et al, 1997; Stenström et al, 1997; Welker et al, 1997), and analyses of phenology data from multiple species and sites (Arft et al, 1999; Oberbauer et al, 2013; Prevéy et al, 2017, 2019; Assmann et al, 2019) Observations from this dataset revealed that phenology of plants at colder Arctic sites is more sensitive to changes in temperature than phenology of plants from warmer Arctic sites (Arft et al.; 1999; Prevéy et al 2017); that lateflowering species flower earlier with warmer temperatures than early-flowering species – potentially leading to shorter flowering seasons with predicted warmer summers in the future (Høye et al, 2013; Prevéy et al, 2019); and that snowmelt and temperature are important drivers of plant phenology along coastal tundra sites (Assmann et al, 2019).
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