Spring temperature change and its implication in the change of vegetation growth in North America from 1982 to 2006
- 10 January 2011
- journal article
- Published by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
- Vol. 108 (4), 1240-1245
- https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1014425108
Abstract
Understanding how vegetation growth responds to climate change is a critical requirement for projecting future ecosystem dynamics. Parts of North America (NA) have experienced a spring cooling trend over the last three decades, but little is known about the response of vegetation growth to this change. Using observed climate data and satellite-derived Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) data from 1982 to 2006, we investigated changes in spring (April-May) temperature trends and their impact on vegetation growth in NA. A piecewise linear regression approach shows that the trend in spring temperature is not continuous through the 25-year period. In the northwestern region of NA, spring temperature increased until the late 1980s or early 1990s, and stalled or decreased afterwards. In response, a spring vegetation greening trend, which was evident in this region during the 1980s, stalled or reversed recently. Conversely, an opposite phenomenon occurred in the northeastern region of NA due to different spring temperature trends. Additionally, the trends of summer vegetation growth vary between the periods before and after the turning point (TP) of spring temperature trends. This change cannot be fully explained by summer drought stress change alone and is partly explained by changes in the trends of spring temperature as well as those of summer temperature. As reported in previous studies, summer vegetation browning trends have occurred in the northwestern region of NA since the early 1990s, which is consistent with the spring and summer cooling trends in this region during this period.Keywords
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