Two decades of historical phenology observations of African tropical tree species: exploring the past to predict the futur

Abstract:

African tropical forests cover ~630 million ha, store up to 66 Pg of carbon and represent a significant carbon sink (0.34Pg C yr^-1 ). As such African tropical forests provide an important negative feedback to the global carbon cycle. Unlike temperate forests, tropical forests lack sharp temperature and photoperiod cues to constrain phenology and growth. Therefore, events such as seasonal leaf abscission and reproductive life cycles are often driven by changes in water availability. With future climate predictions expecting a warmer, and especially drier tropical Africa, it is likely we will see concomitant changes in tree growth and phenology.

As tropical trees show a high degree of phenological plasticity depending on the severity of the dry season, intermittent water stress or the location of an individual in the canopy structure. As such, frequent and long term observations are key to characterize tropical tree phenology. Here I use two long term historical phenology records of weekly observations, some digitized within the context of a citizen science project (http://junglerhythms.org/), to explore differences in tree phenology between two sites (Luki and Yangambi, DR Congo) with contrasting climate regimes within the Congo basin. I describe variation in leaf, flower and fruit phenology across similar species at both locations in relation to complementary historical climatological observations. I further discuss the potential implications of changing phenology under future climate conditions as phenological changes could alter both ecosystem demography and growing season length providing important feedbacks to the climate system.