Savanna tree-grass interactions: A phenological investigation of green-up in relation to water availability over three seasons

•Assessed the green-up phenology of 28 savanna trees and the neighbouring grasses for three seasons•Grass green-up was closely linked to rainfall and initiated by artificial irrigation.•Trees commenced early-greening if rainfall occurred after mid-October.•Remote sensing was able to detect the tree early-greening signal.

Phenology of African savannas is considered to have high temporal variability, yet few studies have quantified this variation between seasons. This study assessed the weekly green-up phenology of trees, as well as below- and between-canopy grasses in a broad-leaved savanna woodland in the Nylsvley Nature Reserve (NNR), South Africa over three growing seasons (2012–2014). Tree green-up start dates were highly variable in comparison to the grasses, whose green-up showed close ties to the availability of water, particularly rainfall. Early green-up of Burkea africana trees occurred if rainfall onset was after mid-October, thus long-term rainfall records indicate that trees would benefit from early-greening approximately 46% of the time in the NNR. The effects of tree canopies on the growth and biomass accumulation of below-canopy grasses showed that during periods of irrigation when water was not limited, light availability became the limiting factor for grass growth, with grasses below the higher shading of B. africana producing significantly lower biomass than those below the less shaded Terminalia sericea canopies. Access to higher light conditions at the start of the growing season potentially drives the 2–5 days faster green-up of below-canopy grasses compared to the between-canopy grasses. A comparison of the above phenological data to the remotely sensed normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) was made, to determine if it was possible to detect an early-greening signal from the trees, which the sensor was able to effectively distinguish. This study highlights the variability in temporal separation between tree and grass phenology in an African savanna. Trees take advantage of periods of low competition from herbaceous neighbours at the end of the dry season prior to the onset of seasonal rainfall, and potentially at the end of the growing season when seasonal rainfall concludes through the uncoupling of their green-up cue from seasonal water availability.