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ARS Home » Plains Area » Bushland, Texas » Conservation and Production Research Laboratory » Soil and Water Management Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #318958
Title: Assessing satellite-based start-of-season trends in the US High Plains

Author
item LIN, XIAOMAO - Kansas State University
item HUBBARD, KEN - Kansas State University
item MAHMOOD, R. - Kansas State University
item SASSENRATH, GRETCHEN - Kansas State University

Submitted to: Environmental Research Letters
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 9/26/2014
Publication Date: 10/10/2014
Citation: Lin, X., Hubbard, K.G., Mahmood, R., Sassenrath, G.F. 2014. Assessing satellite-based start-of-season trends in the U.S. High Plains. Environmental Research Letters. 9(10). doi:10.1088/1748-9326/9/10/104016.

Interpretive Summary:

Technical Abstract: To adequately assess the effects of global warming it is necessary to address trends and impacts at the local level. This study examines phenological changes in the start-of-season (SOS) derived from satellite observations from 1982–2008 in the US High Plains region. The surface climate-based SOS was also evaluated. The averaged profiles of SOS from 37° to 49°N latitude by satellite- and climate-based methods were in reasonable agreement, especially for areas where croplands were masked out and an additional frost date threshold was adopted. The statistically significant trends of satellite-based SOS show a later spring arrival ranging from 0.1 to 4.9 days decade-1 over nine Level III ecoregions. We found the croplands generally exhibited larger trends (later arrival) than the non-croplands. The area-averaged satellite-based SOS for non-croplands (i.e. mostly grasslands) showed no significant trends. We examined the trends of temperatures, precipitation, and standardized precipitation index (SPI), as well as the strength of correlation between the satellite-based SOS and these climatic drivers. Our results indicate that satellite-based SOS trends are spatially and primarily related to annual maximum normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI, mostly in summertime) and/or annual minimum NDVI (mostly in wintertime) and these trends showed the best correlation with six-month SPI over the period 1982–2008 in the US High Plains region.