The impacts of climate warming on plants phenophases in China for the last 40 years

Phenophase change is an important indicator of climate and natural environmental changes (Zhu, 1973; Zhang, 1985). At the beginning of 1960s, China starts the phenology study and the Chinese Academy of Sciences built the Chinese Phenological Observation Network (CPON) (Wan, 1982). From the 1980s to the 1990s, several researchers undertook some preliminary studies on relative phenological events and the relationship of phenophase and climatic change based on the collected data (Zhang, 1995; Chen, 2001). In this study, the impact of climate change on plant phenophase change will be analyzed based on the plant phenophase data observed by CPON from 1963 to 2000. As a result of that the temperature is the key factor to control phenophase change among those of environmental factors (Zhang, 1985), this paper will emphasize on the mechanism of response and model of phenophase change to mean temperature