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Phenological mismatches between above- and belowground plant responses to climate warming

Nature Climate Change volume 12, pages 97–102 (2022)Cite this article

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Abstract

Climate warming is changing the aboveground phenology of plants around the world. However, the effects of warming on the belowground phenology of plants remain relatively under-investigated, even though roots play a vital role in carbon cycling. Here we synthesize 88 published studies to show a phenological mismatch between above- and belowground plant responses to climate warming. For herbaceous plants, warming advanced both the start and end of aboveground growing season, resulting in an unchanged growing season length. In contrast, belowground phenophases (the start, end and length of the growing season) of herbaceous plants remained unchanged. For woody plants, climate warming did not affect any aboveground phenophases but extended their belowground growing season. Mismatches between above- and belowground phenology will strongly influence biomass allocation in plants, implying that terrestrial carbon cycling models based exclusively on aboveground responses are inaccurate. The work highlights an urgent need for future research of under-represented belowground phenological changes.

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Fig. 1: Global distribution of warming experiments included in this meta-analysis.
Fig. 2: Temperature sensitivity of above- and belowground phenophases to experimental warming.
Fig. 3: Key predictors explaining temperature sensitivity of phenophases for herbaceous plants.
Fig. 4: Key predictors explaining temperature sensitivity of phenophases for woody plants.

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Data availability

The data used in the current study are available in the Figshare repository: https://figshare.com/s/1f086364114021cd80d959.

Code availability

The data analysis was carried out in R 3.6.1. The complete codes used to generate the results reported in this study are available in the Figshare repository: https://figshare.com/s/1f086364114021cd80d959.

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Acknowledgements

H.L. was financially sponsored by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31901168) and Shanghai Sailing Program (19YF1413200). H.W. was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31901145) and X.Z. was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31930072 and 31770559).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Tiantong National Station for Forest Ecosystem Research, Center for Global Change and Ecological Forecasting, The Shanghai Key Lab for Urban Ecological Processes and Eco‐Restoration, School of Ecological and Environmental Sciences, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China

    Huiying Liu, Nan Li & Xuhui Zhou

  2. Institute of Eco-Chongming (IEC), Shanghai, China

    Huiying Liu

  3. State Key Laboratory of Grassland and Agro-ecosystems, Institute of Innovation Ecology, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, China

    Hao Wang

  4. College of Forestry and Biotechnology, Zhejiang A&F University, Hangzhou, China

    Junjiong Shao

  5. Center for Ecological Research, Key Laboratory of Sustainable Forest Ecosystem Management-Ministry of Education, School of Forestry, Northeast Forestry University, Harbin, China

    Xuhui Zhou

  6. Department of Geography, College of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK

    Kees Jan van Groenigen

  7. Terrestrial Ecology Group, Institute of Ecology and Evolution, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland

    Madhav P. Thakur

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Contributions

H.L. and H.W. developed the idea, analysed the data and wrote the manuscript with substantial input from M.P.T. and X.Z. All authors contributed to the writing of the paper.

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Correspondence to Xuhui Zhou.

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Peer review information Nature Climate Change thanks Gesche Blume-Werry and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Liu, H., Wang, H., Li, N. et al. Phenological mismatches between above- and belowground plant responses to climate warming. Nat. Clim. Chang. 12, 97–102 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-021-01244-x

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