Local-scale adaptation to climate change: the village flower festival

Abstract

Plant tourism, for example to view flower displays or autumn colours, is a worldwide industry worth billions of US dollars annually. Climate change has been modifying the timings of many of these plant events, but there is little evidence of adaptation to meet this challenge. Here I show that a local-scale festival attracting thousands of people annually has advanced its timing by more than 3 wk over 46 yr. This short paper represents one of the first solid pieces of evidence of adaptation in flower tourism. I believe that these events represent a neglected source of data for confirming responses to a changing climate and, worldwide, it is likely that festivals can provide numerous such examples.

Remote sensing of temperate and boreal forest phenology: A review of progress, challenges and opportunities in the intercomparison of in-situ and satellite phenological metrics

“…Therefore, a changing climate can drive shifts in plant phenology (e.g. timing and length of growing season), with potential impacts on atmospheric processes, ecosystem services, ecosystem dynamics, plant-based economies, trophic interactions and species ranges (Morisette et al, 2009;White et al, 2009;Campoy et al, 2011;Sparks, 2014;. Modelling, assessing and monitoring phenological dynamics are therefore key requirements to improve understanding of how plants respond to a changing world and how this influences vegetated ecosystems (Fitter et al, 1995;Penuelas and Filella, 2001;Morisette et al, 2009;Moore et al, 2016).…”

Perspective: Improving the accuracy of plant phenology observations and land-cover and land-use detection by optical satellite remote-sensing in the Asian tropics

“…Toward this aim, we require accurate and continuous observations of plant phenology (e.g., flowering, leaf flush, leaf coloring, and leaf fall), which serve as proxies of the responses of organisms and ecosystems to the environment (Tang et al, 2016;Piao et al, 2019), and of land-cover and land-use change. Data on plant phenology, and land-cover and land-use change help to explain the spatiotemporal variability of ecosystem properties (e.g., photosynthesis and evapotranspiration, carbon stocks and flows, the land surface's albedo, and energy balances; Penþuelas et al, 2009;Kumagai et al, 2013;Richardson et al, 2013;Wu et al, 2016), emission of biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOCs; Penþuelas et al, 2009;Richardson et al, 2013;IPCC, 2021), cultural ecosystem services (e.g., festivals and recreation opportunities; Sakurai et al, 2011;Sparks, 2014;Nagai et al, 2019), regulating ecosystem services (e.g., pollinator abundances and pollination; Lautenbach et al, 2012;Rohde and Pilliod, 2021), environmental changes in various habitats (Muraoka et al, 2012;Gray and Ewers, 2021), and biodiversity conservation (Morisette et al, 2009;Secades et al, 2014;Morellato et al, 2016). Phenological mismatch between plants and their animal pollinators and consumers caused by the changes of the timing of each phenology due to climate change, reduces the biodiversity (Visser and Gienapp, 2019; Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity, 2020).…”

Review: Monitoring of land cover changes and plant phenology by remote‐sensing in East Asia

“…These changes make important contributions to global climate change. Plant phenology plays an important role in providing ecosystem services such as festivals and recreation opportunities (Nagai et al, 2019;Nagai, Nasahara, et al, 2016;Sakurai et al, 2011;Sparks, 2014). The diversity of plant phenology can guide evaluations of biodiversity conservation (Morellato et al, 2016;Morisette et al, 2009;Polgar & Primack, 2011;SCBD, 2010).…”