DOI: 10.5061/dryad.zcrjdfn8m
title: Effects of flowers on land surface albedo and soil microclimate

description: The phenology of vegetation, namely leaf-out and senescence, can influence
 the Earth’s climate over regional spatial scales and long time periods
 (e.g., over 30 years or more), in addition to microclimates over local
 spatial scales and shorter time periods (weeks to months). However, the
 effects of flowers on climate and microclimate are unknown. We investigate
 whether flowers can influence light reflected by the land surface and soil
 microclimate in a subalpine meadow. We conducted a flower removal
 experiment with a common sunflower species, Helianthella
 quinquenervis, for 3 years (2015, 2017, and 2019). The flower removal
 treatment simulates the appearance of the meadow
 when Helianthella flowers earlier under climate change
 and loses its flowers to frost (other plant structures are not damaged by
 frost). We test the hypotheses that a reduction in cover of yellow flowers
 leads to a greener land surface, lower reflectance, warmer and drier
 soils, and increased plant water stress. Flower removal plots are greener,
 reflect less light, exhibit up to 1.2 °C warmer soil temperatures during
 the warmest daylight hours, and contain ca. 1% less soil
 moisture compared to controls. However, soils were warmer in only 2 of the
 3 years, when flower abundance was
 high. Helianthella water use efficiency did not differ
 between removal and control plots. Our study provides evidence for a
 previously undocumented effect of flowers on soil microclimate, an effect
 that is likely mediated by climate change and flowering phenology. Many
 anthropogenic environmental changes alter landscape albedo, all of which
 could be mediated by flowers: climate change, plant invasions, and
 agriculture. This study highlights how further consideration of the
 effects of flowers on land surface albedo could improve our understanding
 of the effects of vegetation on microclimate.
description: These data were collected in a subalpine meadow near the Rocky
 Mountain Biological Laboratory.  See Iler et al. (in press at
 International Jounral of Biometeorology),
 DOI: 10.1007/s00484-021-02159-0, for details of experimental design and
 data collection. 
description: This dataset is associated with a paper titled: Can flowers
 affect land surface albedo and soil microclimates?  There are separate
 datafiles for the following responses: peak Helianthella flower abundance
 across the three years of the study (2015, 2017, 2019), weekly
 Helianthella flower counts during the flowering period, NDVI, reflectance
 of flower petals vs. leaves measured in the laboratory, reflectance of
 plots with and without flowers measured in the field, soil temperature in
 plots with and without flowers (files for 2015, 2017, and 2019), soil
 moisture for plots with and without flowers (files for 2015, 2017, and
 2019), light data measured from HOBO data loggers (2015, 2017, and 2019),
 and two measures of water stress in Helianthella (delta C13 and pressure
 required to extract water from a leaf).  All of these files are used in an
 uploaded R script to analyze the data (HeQu Albedo Analysis_CLEAN_2020.R),
 and the files and variables are described in a Word metadata
 file.