Spatiotemporal variation of cold requirements for leaf coloration and its environmental cues over the northern deciduous broadleaved forests

Evaluating the interactions between cold requirements for leaf coloration and environmental cues is crucial for understanding the mechanisms of leaf senescence and accurately predicting autumn phenology. Based on remote sensing-derived and ground-observed leaf coloration dates for deciduous broadleaf forests during 1981–2014, we determined location-specific cold requirements for autumn leaf coloration and assessed their spatiotemporal changes. Then, we revealed the major environmental cues of cold requirements and their spatial differentiation. Results show that cold requirements have nonsignificant trends during the past decades at 57.9% of pixels. The interannual variation of cold requirements was mainly influenced by growing-season accumulated temperature (GDD) at 35.8% of pixels and accumulated growing season index (AGSI) at 23.2% of pixels, but less affected by leaf unfolding and low precipitation index (LPI). The increase in GDD or AGSI may decrease cold requirements, and vice versa. The spatial differentiations of the effects of GDD and AGSI depend highly on local summer temperature among climatic classifications with similar humidity conditions. Specifically, the effects of GDD on cold requirements concentrated in humid regions with warmer summers, while that of AGSI mainly occurred in humid and winter dry regions with cooler summers. Higher summer temperatures would strengthen the effects of GDD and reduce the effects of AGSI on cold requirements. These findings deepen the understanding of the influences of environmental factors on leaf senescence progress and suggest that the shifts of factors affecting cold requirements under global warming may enlarge the uncertainty in predicting autumn leaf coloration dates.