Phenology And Growth Of European Trees In Relation To Climate Change

Bäume, Europa, Phänologie von Pflanzeneigenschaften.

Trees are among the longest-living organisms. They are sensitive to extreme climatic events and document the effects of environmental changes in form of structural modifications of their tissues. These modifications represent an integrated signal of complex biological responses enforced by the environment. For example, temporal change in stem increment integrates multiple information of tree performance, and wood anatomical traits may be altered by climatic extremes or environmental stress. Recent developments in preparative tools and computational image analysis enable to quantify changes in wood anatomical features, like vessel density or vessel size. Thus, impacts on their functioning can be related to climatic forcing factors. Similarly, new developments in monitoring (cambial) phenology and mechanistic modelling are enlightening the interrelationships between environmental factors, wood formation and tree performance and mortality. Quantitative wood anatomy is a reliable indicator of drought occurrence during the growing season, and therefore has been studied intensively in recent years. The variability in wood anatomy not only alters the biological and hydraulic functioning of a tree, but may also influence the technological properties of wood, with substantial impacts in forestry. On a larger scale, alterations of sapwood and phloem area and their ratios to other functional traits provide measures to detect changes in a tree’s life functions, and increasing risk of drought-induced mortality with possible impacts on hydrological processes and species composition of plant communities. Genetic variability within and across populations is assumed to be crucial for species survival in an unpredictable future world. The magnitude of genetic variation and heritability of adaptive traits might define the ability to adapt to climate change. Is there a relation between genetic variability and resilience to climate change? Is it possible to link genetic expression and climate change to obtain deeper knowledge of functional genetics? To derive precise estimates of genetic determinism it is important to define adaptive traits in wood properties and on a whole-tree scale. Understanding the mechanisms ruling these processes is fundamental to assess the impact of extreme climate events on forest ecosystems, and to provide realistic scenarios of tree responses to changing climates. Wood is also a major carbon sink with a long-term residence, impacting the global carbon cycle. How well do we understand the link between wood growth dynamics, wood carbon allocation and the global carbon cycle? Papers contribution to this Research Topic will cover a wide range of ecosystems. However, special relevance will be given to Mediterranean-type areas. These involve coastal regions of four continents, making Mediterranean-type ecosystems extremely interesting for investigating the potential impacts of global change on growth and for studying responses of woody plants under extreme environmental conditions. For example, the ongoing trend towards warmer temperatures and reduced precipitation can increase the susceptibility to fire and pests. The EU-funded COST Action STREeSS (Studying Tree Responses to extreme Events: a SynthesiS) addresses such crucial tree biological and forest ecological issues by providing a collection of important methodological and scientific insights, about the current state of knowledge, and by opinions for future research needs.

Phenology refers to recurring plant and animal life cycle stages, such as leafing and flowering, maturation of agricultural plants, emergence of insects, and migration of birds. It is also the study of these recurring events, especially their timing and relationships with weather and climate. Phenological phenomena all give a ready measure of the environment as viewed by the associated organism, and are thus ideal indicators of the impact of local and global changes in weather and climate on the earth’s biosphere. Assessing our changing world is a complex task that requires close cooperation from experts in biology, climatology, ecology, geography, oceanography, remote sensing, and other areas. Like its predecessor, this second edition of Phenology is a synthesis of current phenological knowledge, designed as a primer on the field for global change and general scientists, students, and interested members of the public. With updated and new contributions from over fifty phenological experts, covering data collection, current research, methods, and applications, it demonstrates the accomplishments, progress over the last decade, and future potential of phenology as an integrative environmental science.

Phenology, a study of animal and plant life cycle, is one of the most obvious and direct phenomena on our planet. The timing of phenological events provides vital information for climate change investigation, natural resource management, carbon sequence analysis, and crop and forest growth monitoring. This book summarizes recent progresses in the understanding of seasonal variation in animals and plants and its correlations to climate variables. With the contributions of phenological scientists worldwide, this book is subdivided into sixteen chapters and sorted in four parts: animal life cycle, plant seasonality, phenology in fruit plants, and remote sensing phenology. The chapters of this book offer a broad overview of phenology observations and climate impacts. Hopefully this book will stimulate further developments in relation to phenology monitoring, modeling and predicting.

As climate change continues to dominate the international environmental agenda, phenology – the study of the timing of recurring biological events – has received increasing research attention, leading to an emerging consensus that phenology can be viewed as an ‘early warning system’ for climate change impact. A multidisciplinary science involving many branches of ecology, geography and remote sensing, phenology to date has lacked a coherent methodological text. This new synthesis, including contributions from many of the world’s leading phenologists, therefore fills a critical gap in the current biological literature. Providing critiques of current methods, as well as detailing novel and emerging methodologies, the book, with its extensive suite of references, provides readers with an understanding of both the theoretical basis and the potential applications required to adopt and adapt new analytical and design methods. An invaluable source book for researchers and students in ecology and climate change science, the book also provides a useful reference for practitioners in a range of sectors, including human health, fisheries, forestry, agriculture and natural resource management.

This book deals with phenology, the study of recurring biological life cycle stages, and especially their timing and relationships with biotic and abiotic forces. Given the theoretical and methodological innovations involved, the chapters on defining spatiotemporal patterns of plant phenology and constructing daily temperature-based temporal/spatial models and process-based regional unified models will be of particular interest. Helping readers discover and explore plant phenology’s perspectives in terms of spatiotemporal patterns, processes and mechanisms, the book will also equip young scientists and graduate students to understand the causes of spatiotemporal variation in vegetation seasonality.

Trophic levels.

The chapter describes methodologies for harmonized phenological assessments based on a limited set of development phases: flushing, flowering, secondary flushing, color change, and leaf/needle fall. Manual phenological observations are based on a brief examination in the forest stands. More recently, the use of terrestrial digital image photography for forest phenology monitoring has been adopted. Vegetation indices, such as the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) have been used for many years to quantify the phenology of different ecosystems. For satellite-based remote sensing of vegetation phenology, phenological metrics are derived from time series of optical data and represent the only possible assessment of phenology over large and inaccessible regions. All indirect methods using optical vegetation indices from digital camera or NDVI sensors need to be validated against ground observations, for which manual tree phenological observations from the forest monitoring plots are often used. Examples from phenological monitoring in Slovenia, France, United Kingdom, and Finland are presented.