An Approach to Examining Regional Atmosphere-Plant Interactions with Phenological Data

Matching plant and climatic distributional patterns at a variety of scales is a common geographical exercise, and is directed toward determination of the gross structure of plant-climate interactions. Usage of plant phenological data provides another means of examining such interactions. A 20-year record from an eastern North American phenological network is used to illustrate a regional scale approach to the subject. A simple model incorporating surface, upper air, and first leaf emergence data is described and tested. Results show that a small percentage of synoptic events, marked by warm air advection, account for the majority of high energy accumulation totals. The event model is as good as standard accumulation models for predicting the arrival of the spring green