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Change of plant phenophases explained by survival modeling

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Abstract

It is known from many studies that plant species show a delay in the timing of flowering events with an increase in latitude and altitude, and an advance with an increase in temperature. Furthermore, in many locations and for many species, flowering dates have advanced over the long-term. New insights using survival modeling are given based on data collected (1970–2010) along a 3000-km long transect from northern to eastern central Europe. We could clearly observe that in the case of dandelion (Taraxacum officinale) the risk of flowering time, in other words the probability that flowering occurs, is higher for an earlier day of year in later decades. Our approach assume that temperature has greater influence than precipitation on the timing of flowering. Evaluation of the predictive power of tested models suggests that Cox models may be used in plant phenological research. The applied Cox model provides improved predictions of flowering dates compared to traditional regression methods and gives further insights into drivers of phenological events.

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Notes

  1. http://www.ecad.eu/download/ensembles/ensembles.php

  2. http://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/data/biogeographical-regions-europe-1

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Acknowledgments

We acknowledge the E-OBS dataset from the EU-FP6 project ENSEMBLES (http://ensembles-eu.metoffice.com) and the data providers in the ECA&D project (http://www.ecad.eu).

We would like to thank the NS-Pheno Team (group of researchers) who provided the data that we used to build up a north-south transect-based phenological database for a major of central and eastern European countries. In person, we thank E. Bakšienè (Voke Branch of the Lithuanian Research Centre for Agriculture and Forestry), H. Gregow (Finnish Meteorological Institute), S. Hodzic (Federal Hydrometeorological Institute of Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovine), K. Jatczak (Centre for Polands̀ Climate Monitoring), G. Kàlvàne (University of Latvia), E. Kubin (Natural Resources Institute Finland), P. Nejedlik (Slovak Hydrometeorological Institute), T. Niedz̀wiedz̀ (University of Silesia), V. Palm (University of Tartu), T. Popovic (Hydrometeorological Institute of Montenegro), D. Romanovskaja (Voke Branch of the Lithuanian Research Centre for Agriculture and Forestry), H. Simola (Finnish Meteorological Institute), Z. Snopkovà (Slovak Hydrometeorological Institute), S. Stevkova (Hydrometeorological Institute of Macedonia), V. Vučetić (Croatian Meteorological and Hydrological Service) and A. žust (Environmental Agency of the Republic of Slovenia). And finally, we want to thank J. Terhivuo (Finnish Museum of Natural History), who provided us the data—too unfortunate he cannot see these results published.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Plant Systematics, Ecology and Theoretical Biology, Eötvös Loránd University, H-1117, Budapest, Hungary

    Barbara Templ

  2. Statistics Austria, A-1110, Vienna, Austria

    Stefan Fleck

  3. Department of Statistics and Mathematical Methods in Economics, Vienna University of Technology, A-1040, Vienna, Austria

    Matthias Templ

  4. Zurich University of Applied Sciences, Institute of Data Analysis and Process Design, CH-8400, Winterthur, Switzerland

    Matthias Templ

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  1. Barbara Templ
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Correspondence to Barbara Templ.

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Templ, B., Fleck, S. & Templ, M. Change of plant phenophases explained by survival modeling. Int J Biometeorol 61, 881–889 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00484-016-1267-z

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