Carbon Source Reduction Postpones Autumn Leaf Senescence in a Widespread Deciduous Tree.

ABSTRACT: The growing-season length of temperate and boreal trees has a strong effect on the global carbon cycle. Yet, a poor understanding of the drivers of phenological processes, such as autumn leaf senescence in deciduous trees, limits our capacity to estimate growing-season lengths under climate change. While temperature has been shown to be an important driver of autumn leaf senescence, carbon source-sink dynamics have been proposed as a mechanism that could help explain variation of this important process. According to the carbon sink limitation hypothesis, senescence is regulated by the interplay between plant carbon source and sink dynamics, so that senescence occurs later upon low carbon inputs (source) and earlier upon low carbon demand (sink). Here, we manipulated carbon source-sink dyna

SUBMITTER: Maschler J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9199461 | biostudies-literature | 2022

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature