Impact of climatic variations on the flowering phenology of plant species in jhelum district, punjab, pakistan

M. Majeed, K. H. Bhatti, M. S. Amjad

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

36 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

District Jhelum is located in the extremely diverse province of Punjab, Pakistan, and flowering event in plants is always influenced by the environment. This study was conducted during 2018 to 2020 to investigate the climatic effects on flowering cycle of plants. The main focus of the study was to find out the particular association between flowering phenology of plants and climatic variables. Month-wise phenological response of plants was recorded during frequent field visits at multiple representative microhabitats. The response data is saved as binary data matrix, and mean monthly climatic data is obtained through remote sensing, and analysed by using multivariate analyses like canonical correspondence analysis, hierarchical classification and pseudo-canonical correlation. CCA and Hierarchical classification were applied to assess the importance climatic variations towards the flowering phenological response and potential groups respectively. A total of 404 plant species of 223 genera belonging to 75 plant families were examined. Majority of plant species were found in flowering during the month of March (174 spp.) followed by April (159 spp.) and August (158 spp.), similarly, Summer was the leading season (208 spp.) followed by Monsoon (203 spp.), Spring (181 spp.) and Autumn (157 spp.). CCA results depicted that total variations in the flowering phenology response data were 3.45084, and about 45.6% were explained by the explanatory climatic variables. Wind speed, mean monthly maximum temperature and soil moisture were detected as most influential drivers of flowering phenology in the study area. The current study will be useful for researchers as a major source of knowledge for the conservation of valuable species. Such type of attempts will be supportive to explore the phenological response of plants in various habitats such as forest, hilly, riverine, desert and range lands flora in their future projects.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)3343-3376
Number of pages34
JournalApplied Ecology and Environmental Research
Volume19
Issue number5
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2021
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Canonical correspondence analysis
  • Hierarchical classification
  • Phenological response

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