Response of Vegetation Photosynthetic Phenology to Urbanization in Dongting Lake Basin, China

Urbanization can induce environmental changes such as the urban heat island effect, which in turn influence the terrestrial ecosystem. However, the effect of urbanization on the phenology of subtropical vegetation remains relatively unexplored. This study analyzed the changing trend of vegetation ph...

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Published inRemote sensing (Basel, Switzerland) Vol. 13; no. 18; p. 3722
Main Authors Li, Peng, Sun, Mai, Liu, Yuxin, Ren, Peixin, Peng, Changhui, Zhou, Xiaolu, Tang, Jiayi
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Basel MDPI AG 01.09.2021
Subjects
Biodiversity
Carbon
carbon cycling
Chlorophyll
Climate change
climate sensitivity
Ecosystems
Environmental changes
Fluorescence
Growing season
Lake basins
Lakes
nighttime light
Phenology
Photosynthesis
Physiology
Precipitation
Regions
Remote sensing
Rural areas
Seasons
Sensitivity
solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence
Topography
Trends
Urban heat islands
Urbanization
Vegetation
vegetation phenology
Dongting Lake
China
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Summary:Urbanization can induce environmental changes such as the urban heat island effect, which in turn influence the terrestrial ecosystem. However, the effect of urbanization on the phenology of subtropical vegetation remains relatively unexplored. This study analyzed the changing trend of vegetation photosynthetic phenology in Dongting Lake basin, China, and its response to urbanization using nighttime light and chlorophyll fluorescence datasets. Our results indicated the start of the growing season (SOS) of vegetation in the study area was significantly advanced by 0.70 days per year, whereas the end of the growing season (EOS) was delayed by 0.24 days per year during 2000–2017. We found that urbanization promoted the SOS advance and EOS delay. With increasing urbanization intensity, the sensitivity of SOS to urbanization firstly increased then decreased, while the sensitivity of EOS to urbanization decreased with urbanization intensity. The climate sensitivity of vegetation phenology varied with urbanization intensity; urbanization induced an earlier SOS by increasing preseason minimum temperatures and a later EOS by increasing preseason precipitation. These findings improve our understanding of the vegetation phenology response to urbanization in subtropical regions and highlight the need to integrate human activities into future vegetation phenology models.
ISSN:2072-4292
2072-4292
DOI:10.3390/rs13183722