Ever wondered how artificial light at night (ALAN) and the urban heat island (UHI) together impact plant phenology? Check out the new paper (with Andrew as a coauthor) led by Lin Meng at Vanderbilt, “Artificial light at night outweighs temperature in lengthening urban growing seasons”, published this week in Nature Cities!
The figure below, from Lin’s paper, shows how increasing impervious fractions results in a concave quadratic increase of air temperature (Ta) and exponential increase of ALAN from rural to urban areas. The longer exposure to ALAN and higher Ta collectively contributes to a longer growing season, represented by the advancement of the SOS and delay of EOS in urban areas compared with rural areas.
