Understory plants evade shading in a temperate deciduous forest amid climate variability by shifting phenology in synchrony with canopy trees.

ABSTRACT: Global warming is leading understory and canopy plant communities of temperate deciduous forests to grow leaves earlier in spring and drop them later in autumn. If understory species extend their leafy seasons less than canopy trees, they will intercept less light. We look for mismatched phenological shifts between canopy and understory in 28 years (1995-2022) of weekly data from Trelease Woods, Urbana, IL, USA. The observations cover 31 herb species of contrasting seasonality (for 1995-2017), three sapling species, and the 15 most dominant canopy tree species for all years, combined with solar radiation, temperature and canopy light transmittance data. We estimate how understory phenology, cold temperatures, canopy phenology, and solar radiation have individually limited understory plants

SUBMITTER: Augspurger CK 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11207122 | biostudies-literature | 2024

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature