TY - JOUR T1 - Urban heat island impacts on plant phenology: intra-urban variability and response to land cover JF - Environmental Research Letters Y1 - 2016 A1 - Samuel C Zipper A1 - Jason Schatz A1 - Aditya Singh A1 - Christopher J Kucharik A1 - Philip A Townsend A1 - Steven P Loheide KW - land surface phenology KW - remote sensing KW - sensor network KW - urban climate KW - urban ecology KW - urban heat island KW - vegetation phenology AB - Despite documented intra-urban heterogeneity in the urban heat island (UHI) effect, little is knownabout spatial or temporal variability in plant response to the UHI. Using an automated temperaturesensor network in conjunction with Landsat-derived remotely sensed estimates of start/end of thegrowing season, we investigate the impacts of the UHI on plant phenology in the city of Madison WI(USA) for the 2012–2014 growing seasons. Median urban growing season length (GSL) estimated fromtemperature sensors is ∼5 d longer than surrounding rural areas, and UHI impacts on GSL arerelatively consistent from year-to-year. Parks within urban areas experience a subdued expression ofGSL lengthening resulting from interactions between the UHI and a park cool island effect. Acrossall growing seasons, impervious cover in the area surrounding each temperature sensor explains >50%of observed variability in phenology. Comparisons between long-term estimates of annual meanphenological timing, derived from remote sensing, and temperature-based estimates of individualgrowing seasons show no relationship at the individual sensor level. The magnitude of disagreementbetween temperature-based and remotely sensed phenology is a function of impervious and grass coversurrounding the sensor, suggesting that realized GSL is controlled by both local land cover andmicrometeorological conditions. VL - 11 SN - 1748-9326 UR - http://stacks.iop.org/1748-9326/11/i=5/a=054023 IS - 5 ER -