Title
Masting effect on canopy greenness and climate response on seed production of Fagus grandifolia subsp. mexicana across the Sierra Madre Oriental, Mexico
Date Issued
01 December 2021
Access level
open access
Resource Type
journal article
Author(s)
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
Publisher(s)
Elsevier Inc.
Abstract
Specific proximate mechanisms as climate spatial fluctuations modify the pattern of synchronic reproduction (masting) or seed production at population level in the Fagus genus worldwide. However, phenological processes as mass flowering, beechnut development and seed rain have attracted attention to understand the masting behavior in relict-endangered tree species. The normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), temperature and precipitation could act as proxy signals resembling the onset of mast-seeding events. We studied a masting event in 2017 in ten relict-endangered Mexican beech forests (Fagus grandifolia subsp. mexicana) in eastern Mexican montane cloud forests. Our aims were 1) test if NDVI shows a particular pattern before and after masting event in 2017 at 10 sites; 2) explore how monthly temperature and precipitation change two years before and during the masting across the Mexican beech forests; and 3) assess how the beechnut amount and quality was affected by spatial and temporal specific climatic variables in the recorded masting event among the beech forests. We found that the masting was related to the canopy greenness variation (2015–2018) in the beech forests. Nut production variability among beech forests was related to temperature and precipitation fluctuations. We found that maximum and mean temperature and high precipitation during May to August were decisive to trigger the synchronic Mexican beech masting spatial behavior.
Volume
2
Language
English
OCDE Knowledge area
Meteorología y ciencias atmosféricas
Ecología
Negocios, Administración
Subjects
Scopus EID
2-s2.0-85134740073
Source
Climate Change Ecology
ISSN of the container
26669005
Sources of information:
Directorio de Producción Científica
Scopus