Poleward shifts in the maximum of spring phenological responsiveness of Ginkgo biloba to temperature in China

Abstract

Summary Global warming is advancing the timing of spring leaf‐out in temperate and boreal plants, affecting biological interactions and global biogeochemical cycles. However, spatial variation in spring phenological responsiveness to climate change within species remains poorly understood. Here, we investigated variation in the responsiveness of spring phenology to temperature (RSP; days to leaf‐out at a given temperature) in 2754 Ginkgo biloba twigs of trees distributed across subtropical and temperate regions in China from 24°N to 44°N. We found a nonlinear effect of mean annual temperature on spatial variation in RSP, with the highest response rate at c. 12°C and lower response rates at warmer or colder temperatures due to declines in winter chilling accumulation. We then predicted the spatial maxima in RSP under current and future climate scenarios, and found that trees are currently most responsive in central China, which corresponds to the species' main distribution area. Under a high‐emission scenario, we predict a 4‐degree latitude shift in the responsiveness maximum toward higher latitudes over the rest of the century. The identification of the nonlinear responsiveness of spring phenology to climate gradients and the spatial shifts in phenological responsiveness expected under climate change represent new mechanistic insights that can inform models of spring phenology and ecosystem functioning.

Integration of the Vegetation Phenology Module Improves Ecohydrological Simulation by the SWAT-Carbon Model

“…However, winter warming-induced reductions in chilling accumulation would increase the forcing requirement and delay the leaf-out date (Fu et al, 2015;Wu et al, 2023). Therefore, the EPIC module cannot capture the real phenological processes (Ma et al, 2019), and coupling specific phenology module with the SWAT-Carbon model is urgently needed to accurately simulate hydrological processes.…”