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Urban spring phenology in the middle temperate zone of China: dynamics and influence factors

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Abstract

Urbanization and its resultant urban heat island provide a means for evaluating the impact of climate warming on vegetation phenology. To predict the possible response of vegetation phenology to rise of temperature, it is necessary to investigate factors influencing vegetation phenology in different climate zones. The start of growing season (SOS) in seven cities located in the middle temperate humid, semi-humid, semi-arid, and arid climate zones in China was extracted based on satellite-derived normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) data. The dynamics of urban SOS from 2000 to 2009 and the correlations between urban SOS and land surface temperatures (LST), precipitation, and sunshine duration, respectively, were analyzed. The results showed that there were no obvious change trends for urban SOS, and the heat island induced by urbanization can make SOS earlier in urban areas than that in adjacent rural areas. And the impact of altitude on SOS was also not negligible in regions with obvious altitude difference between urban and adjacent rural areas. Precipitation and temperature were two main natural factors influencing urban SOS in the middle temperate zone, but their impacts varied with climate zones. Only in Harbin city with lower sunshine duration in spring, sunshine duration had more significant impact than temperature and precipitation. Interference of human activities on urban vegetation was non-negligible, which can lower the dependence of urban SOS on natural climatic factors.

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Acknowledgments

This work was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41401407). MODIS data were distributed by the Land Processes Distributed Active Archive Center (LP DAAC), located at the US Geological Survey (USGS) Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center (lpdaac.usgs.gov).The land use and boundary data came from Data Sharing Infrastructure of Earth System Science (www.geodata.cn). The authors thank the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments on earlier versions of the manuscript.

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  1. Shandong Institute of Agricultural Sustainable Development, Jinan, 250100, China

    Shouzhen Liang

  2. South China Sea Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou, 510301, China

    Ping Shi

  3. Shenzhen Key Laboratory of Spatial Smart and Services, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, 518060, China

    Hongzhong Li

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Liang, S., Shi, P. & Li, H. Urban spring phenology in the middle temperate zone of China: dynamics and influence factors. Int J Biometeorol 60, 531–544 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00484-015-1049-z

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