6 research outputs found
Climatic effects on the phenology of geophytes
Nowadays, the scientific and social significance of the research of climatic effects has become
outstanding. In order to be able to predict the ecological effects of the global climate change, it is
necessary to study monitoring databases of the past and explore connections. For the case study
mentioned in the title, historical weather data series from the Hungarian Meteorological Service and
Szaniszló Priszter’s monitoring data on the phenology of geophytes have been used. These data describe
on which days the observed geophytes budded, were blooming and withered. In our research we have
found that the classification of the observed years according to phenological events and the classification
of those according to the frequency distribution of meteorological parameters show similar patterns, and
the one variable group is suitable for explaining the pattern shown by the other one. Furthermore, our
important result is that the dates of all three observed phenophases correlate significantly with the average
of the daily temperature fluctuation in the given period. The second most often significant parameter is
the number of frosty days, this also seem to be determinant for all phenophases. Usual approaches based
on the temperature sum and the average temperature don’t seem to be really important in this respect.
According to the results of the research, it has turned out that the phenology of geophytes can be well
modelled with the linear combination of suitable meteorological parameter
Comparative analysis of the relationship between phenological phenomena and meteorological indicators based on insect and plant monitoring
Climate change is one of the biggest environmental problems of the 21st century. The most
sensitive indicators of the effects of the climatic changes are phenological processes of the biota. The
effects of climate change which were observed the earliest are the remarkable changes in the phenology
(i.e. the timing of the phenophases) of the plants and animals, which have been systematically monitored
later. In our research we searched for the answer: which meteorological factors show the strongest
statistical relationships with phenological phenomena based on some chosen plant and insect species (in
case of which large phenological databases are available). Our study was based on two large databases:
one of them is the Lepidoptera database of the Hungarian Plant Protection and Forestry Light Trap
Network, the other one is the Geophytes Phenology Database of the Botanical Garden of Eötvös Loránd
University. In the case of butterflies, statistically defined phenological dates were determined based on
the daily collection data, while in the case of plants, observation data on blooming were available. The
same meteorological indicators were applied for both groups in our study. On the basis of the data series,
analyses of correlation were carried out and a new indicator, the so-called G index was introduced,
summing up the number of correlations which were found to be significant on the different levels of
significance. In our present study we compare the significant meteorological factors and analyse the
differences based on the correlation data on plants and butterflies. Data on butterflies are much more
varied regarding the effectiveness of the meteorological factors