Influence of spring and autumn phenological transitions on forest ecosystem productivity

By Andrew D. Richardson, T. Black, Philippe Ciais, N. Delbart, Mark A. Friedl, Nadine Gobron, David Y. Hollinger, Werner L. Kutsch, B. Longdoz, S. Luyssaert and 11 more. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 2010

911 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We use eddy covariance measurements of net ecosystem productivity (NEP) from 21 FLUXNET sites (153 site-years of data) to investigate relationships between phenology and productivity (in terms of both NEP and gross ecosystem photosynthesis, GEP) in temperate and boreal forests. Results are used to evaluate the plausibility of four different conceptual models. Phenological indicators were derived from the eddy covariance time series, and from remote sensing and models. We examine spatial patterns (across sites) and temporal patterns (across years); an important conclusion is that it is likely that neither of these accurately represents how productivity will respond to future phenological shifts resulting from ongoing climate change. In spring and autumn, increased GEP resulting from an ‘extra’ day tends to be offset by concurrent, but smaller, increases in ecosystem respiration, and thus the effect on NEP is still positive. Spring productivity anomalies appear to have carry-over effects that translate to productivity anomalies in the following autumn, but it is not clear that these result directly from phenological anomalies. Finally, the productivity of evergreen needleleaf forests is less sensitive to phenology than is productivity of deciduous broadleaf forests. This has implications for how climate change may drive shifts in competition within mixed-species stands.

Subfields: Ecological Modeling, Ecology, Global and Planetary Change

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/085be62b39293421be98fa215e3b663ab4efc0ff

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Citations in the corpus

Climate change, phenology, and phenological control of vegetation feedbacks to the climate system (2013, background): “While some of the extra photosynthesis resulting from a longer growing season tends to be offset by concurrent increases in ecosystem respiration, this effect tends to be smaller than the increase in GEP, which explains why net C uptake is generally greater at sites with a longer, rather than shorte”
Contrasting response of grassland versus forest carbon and water fluxes to spring drought in Switzerland (2013, background): “GPP increases from 2010 to 2011 were smaller in Davos compared to Laegeren (table 3), suggesting that productivity in evergreen needleleaf forest is less sensitive to seasonal climate anomalies compared to deciduous broadleaf forest (Richardson et al 2010).”
Forest phenology and a warmer climate – growing season extension in relation to climatic provenance (2012, background): “There remains, however, a hesitancy to use a linear extrapolation of BB responses, especially beyond temperatures in the historic record (Sparks & Menzel, 2002; Menzel et al., 2005; Ibáñez et al., 2010; Man & Lu, 2010; Richardson et al., 2010).”
Evaluation of terrestrial carbon cycle models for their response to climate variability and to CO2 trends (2013, positive): “This implies that rising MAT causes an extension of the growing season, and induces an increase in GPP (Piao et al., 2007; Richardson et al., 2010) during warm years.”
Emerging opportunities and challenges in phenology: a review (2016, background): “In particular, changes in the timing of the onset and offset of the vegetation growing season have a considerable influence on the annual carbon budget in Northern Hemisphere vegetation (Piao et al. 2007, 2008, Richardson et al. 2010, Keenan et al. 2014).”