Climate drives shifts in grass reproductive phenology across the western USA

New Phytologist

By: Seth M. Munson and A. Lexine Long

The capacity of grass species to alter their reproductive timing across space and through time can indicate their ability to cope with environmental variability and help predict their future performance under climate change.
We determined the long-term (1895–2013) relationship between flowering times of grass species and climate in space and time using herbarium records across ecoregions of the western USA.
There was widespread concordance of C₃ grasses accelerating flowering time and general delays for C₄ grasses with increasing mean annual temperature, with the largest changes for annuals and individuals occurring in more northerly, wetter ecoregions. Flowering time was delayed for most grass species with increasing mean annual precipitation across space, while phenology–precipitation relationships through time were more mixed.
Our results suggest that the phenology of most grass species has the capacity to respond to increases in temperature and altered precipitation expected with climate change, but weak relationships for some species in time suggest that climate tracking via migration or adaptation may be required. Divergence in phenological responses among grass functional types, species, and ecoregions suggests that climate change will have unequal effects across the western USA.

Additional publication details
Publication type	Article
Publication Subtype	Journal Article
Title	Climate drives shifts in grass reproductive phenology across the western USA
Series title	New Phytologist
DOI	10.1111/nph.14327
Volume	213
Issue	4
Year Published	2016
Language	English
Publisher	Wiley
Contributing office(s)	Southwest Biological Science Center
Description	11 p.
First page	1945
Last page	1955
Country	United States
Google Analytic Metrics	Metrics page