Large-scale prerain vegetation green-up across Africa

Global Change Biology
Tracy AdolePeter M Atkinson

Abstract

Information on the response of vegetation to different environmental drivers, including rainfall, forms a critical input to ecosystem models. Currently, such models are run based on parameters that, in some cases, are either assumed or lack supporting evidence (e.g., that vegetation growth across Africa is rainfall-driven). A limited number of studies have reported that the onset of rain across Africa does not fully explain the onset of vegetation growth, for example, drawing on the observation of prerain flush effects in some parts of Africa. The spatial extent of this prerain green-up effect, however, remains unknown, leaving a large gap in our understanding that may bias ecosystem modelling. This paper provides the most comprehensive spatial assessment to-date of the magnitude and frequency of the different patterns of phenology response to rainfall across Africa and for different vegetation types. To define the relations between phenology and rainfall, we investigated the spatial variation in the difference, in number of days, between the start of rainy season (SRS) and start of vegetation growing season (SOS); and between the end of rainy season (ERS) and end of vegetation growing season (EOS). We reveal a much more extens...Continue Reading

References

Jan 20, 2007·International Journal of Biometeorology·S StuderP L Vidale
May 5, 2007·Trends in Ecology & Evolution·Elsa E ClelandMark D Schwartz
Feb 2, 2008·Science·Molly E Brown, Christopher C Funk
May 16, 2009·Science·Josep PeñuelasIolanda Filella
Jun 17, 2016·PloS One·Edmund Carl February, Steven Ian Higgins

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Citations

Nov 2, 2019·Communications Biology·Tracy AdolePeter M Atkinson
Jun 13, 2020·Global Change Biology·Simon ScheiterKyle W Tomlinson
Jan 12, 2020·Communications Biology·Tracy AdolePeter M Atkinson

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