Warming and nitrogen effects on plant phenology

Phenology is one of most sensitive traits of plants in response to regional climate warming and it may interact with other environmental change factors such as increasing nitrogen deposition. Xia and Wan conduct a 4-year field experiment manipulating temperature and N in a temperate grassland system in northern China and study the effects on eight plant species. They find that warming advances both the flowering and fruiting times, leading to no impact on the reproductive duration, and that the response to warming of phenology is larger in earlier- than in later-flowering species. The effects of warming and N addition on phenology are species-specific and independent of each other.