Climate warming is linked to a widening interval between leaf unfolding and flowering in European trees, with implications for tree fitness and the wider environment, according to new research published in the British Ecological Society’s Journal of Ecology.
Climate warming is linked to a widening interval between leaf unfolding and flowering in European trees, with implications for tree fitness and the wider environment, according to new research published in the British Ecological Society’s Journal of Ecology.
An international team of researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Zhejiang A & F University and the University of Eastern Finland have found that regardless of whether flowering or leaf unfolding occurred first in a species, the first event advanced more than the second over the last seven decades.
In the four European tree species the researchers looked at: horse chestnut, scots pine, alder and ash, the time interval between leaf unfolding and flowering increased at a rate of 0.6 to 1.3 days per decade between 1950 – 2013. Similar trends were seen geographically, with the time interval between the two life-cycle (phenological) events being greater in trees in warmer areas of Europe.
Although leaf unfolding and flowering have both been shown to be happening earlier with climate warming, this is the first large scale study to examine both phenological events together and show that they are not advancing at the same rate in response to climate warming.
Read more at: British Ecological Society
Photo Credit: gregovish via Pixabay
