A Collaborative Study by Professor Yuyu Zhou Reveals the Impact of Tree Species Composition on Urban Phenology
Professor Yuyu Zhou, from the Department of Geography at HKU, conducted a collaborative study examining how the composition of tree species affects phenological responses to urbanisation. The research team comprised experts from around the world, including Beijing, Belgium, Hong Kong, Spain, Switzerland and the USA.
Urban areas serve as natural laboratories for studying phenological responses to climate change, due to warmer conditions relative to surrounding rural regions. This study investigated how species composition influences these phenological responses to urbanisation across cities in the Northern Hemisphere. By integrating manipulative experiments, satellite-derived data, and georeferenced tree occurrence records, the team found that differences in temperature sensitivity of spring phenology between urban and rural areas are largely driven by variations in species composition, surpassing the preseason temperature. This pattern is particularly pronounced in Asian cities. These findings highlighted the crucial role of species composition in understanding phenological responses to climate warming, particularly in urban environments.
This study was recently published in Nature Communications in an article entitled “Tree species composition governs urban phenological responses to warming”.
Link to the paper: here