Autumn Phenological Grid Dataset of Typical Deciduous Broad-leaved Woody Plants in China from 1963 to 2015

Plant autumn phenology is affected by many environmental factors, such as temperature, water, and daylight. Because of the sensitivity to environmental factors, changes in the timing and distribution of autumn phenology is more complicated and may be important indicators of global changes. In this paper, the leaf coloring date (LCD) of 21 woody plants (Fraxinus chinensis Roxb. (Oleaceae), Salix babylonica L. (Salicaceae), Robinia pseudoacacia L. (Leguminosae), Ulmus pumila L. (Ulmaceae Mirb.), Armeniaca vulgaris Lam. (Rosaceae), etc.) from 1963–2015 was obtained from the Chinese Phenological Observation Network and used to establish and compare three LCD models (multiple regression, temperature-photoperiod, and spring-influenced autumn). The 0.5° × 0.5° LCD grid data of the five species from 1963 to 2015 were developed by simulation and scale expansion. The cross-validation results showed that the average simulation error of the LCD was approximately 10–18 days. The autumn phenological grid data set of China is the basic data representing the spatial–temporal pattern and changes in autumn phenology in China over the last 50 years. The data set includes three parts: header file, phenophase, and spatial distribution, which consist of three data folders and 2249 data files. The data is stored in TXT, GEOTIFF, and ARCGIS ASCII formats. The data volume is 114 MB before compression (19 MB after compression).