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Divergent response of vegetation phenology to extreme temperatures and precipitation of different intensities on the Tibetan Plateau

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Abstract

Quantifying how climate factors affect vegetation phenology is crucial for understanding climate-vegetation interactions and carbon and water cycles under a changing climate. However, the effects of different intensities of extreme climatic events on vegetation phenology remain poorly understood. Using a long-term solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence dataset, we investigated the response of vegetation phenology to extreme temperatures and precipitation events of different intensities across the Tibetan Plateau (TP) from 2000 to 2018. We found that the effect of maximum temperature exposure days (TxED) and minimum temperature exposure days (TnED) on the start of the growing season (SOS) was initially delayed and shifted to advance along the increasing temperature gradients. However, the response of the end of the growing season (EOS) to TxED and TnED shifted from an advance to a delay with increasing temperature gradients until the temperature thresholds were reached, above which thresholds produced an unfavorable response to vegetation growth and brought the EOS to an early end. The corresponding maximum and minimum temperature thresholds were 10.12 and 2.54°C, respectively. In contrast, cumulative precipitation (CP) was more likely to advance SOS and delay EOS as the precipitation gradient increased, but the advance of SOS is gradually weakening. Four vegetation types (i.e., forest, shrubland, meadow, and steppe) showed similar trends in response to different climates, but the optimal climatic conditions varied between the vegetation types. Generally, meadow and steppe had lower optimal temperatures and precipitation than forest and shrubland. These findings revealed the divergent responses of vegetation phenology to extreme climate events of different intensities, implying that the SOS will continue to advance with warming, whereas the EOS may undergo a partial transformation from delayed areas to advanced areas with continued warming.

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Acknowledgements

We thank anonymous reviewers for their valuable suggestions on our manuscript. This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 41901117, U22A20570) and the Science and Technology Innovation Program of Hunan Province (Grant No. 2022RC4027).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Geographic Sciences, Hunan Normal University, Changsha, 410081, China

    Mai Sun, Peng Li, Peixin Ren, Jiayi Tang, Cicheng Zhang, Xiaolu Zhou & Changhui Peng

  2. Department of Biology Sciences, Institute of Environment Sciences, University of Quebec at Montreal, Montreal, H3C 3P8, Canada

    Changhui Peng

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  1. Mai Sun
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  2. Peng Li
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Sun, M., Li, P., Ren, P. et al. Divergent response of vegetation phenology to extreme temperatures and precipitation of different intensities on the Tibetan Plateau. Sci. China Earth Sci. 66, 2200–2210 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11430-022-1156-1

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