Elevated CO2 further lengthens growing season under warming conditions

Reyes-Fox, Melissa; Steltzer, Heidi; Trlica, M. J.; McMaster, Gregory S.; Andales, Allan A.; LeCain, Daniel R.; Morgan, Jack A.

doi:10.1038/nature13207

Cited by 166 publications

(134 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…In biennial plants, rosettes often need to attain a minimum size to flower, so larger individuals often flower earlier (e.g., Gross, 1981). In contrast, for perennial species, CO 2 has been shown to lengthen the growing season, but have little effect on reproductive phenology in the PHACE study (Reyes-Fox et al, 2014). Thus, it may be that biennial species respond differently to elevated CO 2 because their flowering time is particularly sensitive to plant size.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 94%

Increased seed consumption by biological control weevil tempers positive CO2 effect on invasive plant (Centaurea diffusa) fitness

et al. 2015

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h i g h l i g h t sElevated CO 2 (but not temperature) increased plant fitness but also agent density. Biological control agent thus tempered positive CO 2 effect on plant fitness. Both elevated CO 2 and temperature hastened plant phenology. Faster plant phenology under elevated CO 2 made plants more attractive to agents. Plant and agent phenologies may be better matched with climate change.g r a p h i c a l a b s t r a c t a b s t r a c t Predicted increases in atmospheric CO 2 and temperature may benefit some invasive plants, increasing the need for effective invasive plant management. Biological control can be an effective means of managing invasive plants, but the anticipated range in responses of plant-insect interactions to climate change make it difficult to predict how effective biological control will be in the future. Field experiments that manipulate climate within biological control systems could improve predictive power, but are challenging to implement and therefore rare to date. Here, we show that free air CO 2 enrichment in the field increased the fitness of Centaurea diffusa Lam., a problematic invader in much of the western United States. However, CO 2 enrichment also increased the impact of the biological control agent Larinus minutus (Coleoptera: Curculionidae) on C. diffusa fitness. C. diffusa plants flowered earlier and seed heads developed faster with both elevated CO 2 and increased temperature. Natural dispersal of L. minutus into the experimental plots provided a unique opportunity to examine weevil preference for and effects on C. diffusa grown under the different climate change treatments. Elevated CO 2 increased both the proportion of seed heads infested by L. minutus and, correspondingly, the amount of seed removed by weevils. Warming had no detectable effect on weevil utilization of plants. Higher weevil densities on elevated CO 2 plants reduced, but did not eliminate, the positive effects of CO 2 on C. diffusa fitness. Correlations between plant development time and weevil infestation suggest that climate change increased weevil infestation by hastening plant phenology. Phenological mismatches are anticipated with climate change in many plant-insect systems, but in the case of L. minutus and C. diffusa in mixed-grass prairie, a better phenological match may make the biological control agent more effective as CO 2 levels rise.Published by Elsevier Inc.http://dx.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 94%

Increased seed consumption by biological control weevil tempers positive CO2 effect on invasive plant (Centaurea diffusa) fitness

et al. 2015

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“…Attributing phenological responses to any of these drivers will require regional approaches, because studies 17,18,25 suggest that vegetation activity is co-limited by several environmental factors and the limiting factor is likely to be region specific. For example, in African savannas, where rainfall is widely assumed to limit vegetation activity, it has been shown that rainfall does not control leaf onset of all species 25 .…”

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confidence: 99%

“…In Europe there is a strong temperature control over leaf onset, but not leaf senescence 17 . In a North American grassland, experimental evidence suggests that warming coupled with increased atmospheric CO 2 delays leaf senescence, but that increased CO 2 does not trigger earlier leaf emergence 18 . Because CO 2 influences the water-use efficiency of plants 27 , we expect that increased CO 2 is most likely to extend the growing season where the beginning or end of the growing season is moisture limited.…”

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confidence: 99%

Three decades of multi-dimensional change in global leaf phenology

2015

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Changes in the phenology of vegetation activity may accelerate or dampen rates of climate change by altering energy exchanges between the land surface and the atmosphere 1,2 and can threaten species with synchronized life cycles 3-5 . Current knowledge of long-term changes in vegetation activity is regional 6-8 , or restricted to highly integrated measures of change such as net primary productivity 9-13 , which mask details that are relevant for Earth system dynamics. Such details can be revealed by measuring changes in the phenology of vegetation activity. Here we undertake a comprehensive global assessment of changes in vegetation phenology. We show that the phenology of vegetation activity changed severely (by more than 2 standard deviations in one or more dimensions of phenological change) on 54% of the global land surface between 1981 and 2012. Our analysis confirms previously detected changes in the boreal and northern temperate regions 6-8 . The adverse consequences of these northern phenological shifts for land-surface-climate feedbacks 1 , ecosystems 4 and species 3 are well known. Our study reveals equally severe phenological changes in the southern hemisphere, where consequences for the energy budget and the likelihood of phenological mismatches are unknown. Our analysis provides a sensitive and direct measurement of ecosystem functioning, making it useful both for monitoring change and for testing the reliability of early warning signals of change 14 .Recent climate change has shifted species distributions 15,16 and leaf phenology 17,18 around the world, leading to mismatches in previously synchronized phenological cycles 3,4 . Such mismatches greatly increase the risk of extinction for affected species, and ongoing climatic and phenological change is expected to further increase this risk 5 . Despite documenting and predicting effects of climate change on many organisms, these previous studies do not provide an easy way of inferring how widespread such changes are or where they are most severe. In addition to being a symptom of climate change, vegetation change also feeds back to the climate system by forcing rates of energy exchange between the land surface and the atmosphere. Changes in the vigour and timing of vegetation activity can therefore accelerate or slow down rates of climate change 1 . Yet, the extent to which changes in vegetation phenology will impact the climate system by modifying albedo, transpiration, partitioning between latent and sensible heat in the atmosphere, and cloud formation, has been identified as a major source of uncertainty in climate change projections 2,19 .

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“…In general, an increasing trend in the BTSSR can accelerate plant growth by altering plant photosynthesis processes [73,74] and lengthening the growing season [75,76]. However, increasing trends can also increase regional evapotranspiration [26] which, in conjunction with a decreasing trend in precipitation in the BTSSR [77], will increase the risk of drought [78].…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Temporal Trends and Spatial Patterns of Temperature and Its Extremes over the Beijing-Tianjin Sand Source Region (1960–2014), China

Wei

Wang

Zhang

et al. 2018

Advances in Meteorology

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In order to examine temperature changes and extremes in the Beijing-Tianjin Sand Source Region (BTSSR), ten extreme temperature indices were selected, categorized, and calculated spanning the period 1960-2014, and the spatiotemporal variability and trends of temperature and extremes on multitimescales in the BTSSR were investigated using the Mann-Kendall (M-K) test, Sen's slope estimator, and linear regression. Results show that mean temperatures have increased and extreme temperature events have become more frequent. Annual temperature has recorded a significant increasing trend over the BTSSR, in which 51 stations exhibited significant increasing trends ( < 0.05); winter temperature recorded the most significant increasing trend in the northwest subregion. All extreme temperature indices showed warming trends at most stations; a higher warming slope in extreme temperature mainly occurred along the northeast border and northwest border and in the central-southern mountain area. As extreme low temperature events decrease, vegetation damage due to freezing temperatures will reduce and low cold-tolerant plants may expand their distribution range northward to revegetate barren areas in the BTSSR. However, in water-limited areas of the BTSSR, increasing temperatures in the growing season may exacerbate stress associated with plants relying on precipitation due to higher temperatures combining with decreasing precipitation.

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Elevated CO2 further lengthens growing season under warming conditions

Cited by 166 publications

References 27 publications

Increased seed consumption by biological control weevil tempers positive CO2 effect on invasive plant (Centaurea diffusa) fitness

Increased seed consumption by biological control weevil tempers positive CO2 effect on invasive plant (Centaurea diffusa) fitness

Three decades of multi-dimensional change in global leaf phenology

Temporal Trends and Spatial Patterns of Temperature and Its Extremes over the Beijing-Tianjin Sand Source Region (1960–2014), China

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