Yaoping Wang, Jiafu Mao, Christa M Brelsford, Daniel M Ricciuto, Fengming Yuan, Xiaoying Shi, Deeksha Rastogi, Melanie M Mayes, Shih-Chieh Kao, Jeffrey M Warren, Natalie A Griffiths, Xinghua Cheng, David J Weston, Yuyu Zhou, Lianhong Gu, Peter E Thornton
With continuing global warming and urbanization, it is increasingly important to understand the resilience of urban vegetation to extreme high temperatures, but few studies have examined urban vegetation at large scale or both concurrent and delayed responses. In this study, we performed an urban-rural comparison using the Enhanced Vegetation Index and months that exceed the historical 90th percentile in mean temperature (referred to as "hot months") across 85 major cities in the contiguous United States. We found that hot months initially enhanced vegetation greenness but could cause a decline afterwards, especially for persistent (≥4 months) and intense (≥+2 °C) episodes in summer...
April 2024: PNAS Nexus