Plants in the UK flower a month earlier under recent warming.
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Publication Date
2022-02-09Journal Title
Proc Biol Sci
ISSN
0962-8452
Publisher
The Royal Society
Volume
289
Issue
1968
Language
eng
Type
Article
This Version
VoR
Metadata
Show full item recordCitation
Büntgen, U., Piermattei, A., Krusic, P. J., Esper, J., Sparks, T., & Crivellaro, A. (2022). Plants in the UK flower a month earlier under recent warming.. Proc Biol Sci, 289 (1968) https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2021.2456
Abstract
Global temperatures are rising at an unprecedented rate, but environmental responses are often difficult to recognize and quantify. Long-term observations of plant phenology, the annually recurring sequence of plant developmental stages, can provide sensitive measures of climate change and important information for ecosystem services. Here, we present 419 354 recordings of the first flowering date from 406 plant species in the UK between 1753 and 2019 CE. Community-wide first flowering advanced by almost one month on average when comparing all observations before and after 1986 (p < 0.0001). The mean first flowering time is 6 days earlier in southern than northern sites, 5 days earlier under urban than rural settings, and 1 day earlier at lower than higher elevations. Compared to trees and shrubs, the largest lifeform-specific phenological shift of 32 days is found in herbs, which are generally characterized by fast turnover rates and potentially high levels of genetic adaptation. Correlated with January-April maximum temperatures at -0.81 from 1952-2019 (p < 0.0001), the observed trends (5.4 days per decade) and extremes (66 days between the earliest and latest annual mean) in the UK's first flowering dataset can affect the functioning and productivity of ecosystems and agriculture.
Keywords
Climate change, Plant phenology, Ecosystem service, Citizen Science, British Isles, Woodland Trust
Sponsorship
European Research Council (882727)
Identifiers
PMC8808087, 35105239
External DOI: https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2021.2456
This record's URL: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/334714
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