The investigations refer to the development of plant phenology since the
1960s in Germany. Spatiotemporal trends were assessed by means of
regression kriging. It could be shown that there already is a distinct
shift of phenological onset towards the beginning of the year of up to
two weeks. In future, a shift of up to one month was calculated till
2080. Moreover, a prolongation of the vegetation period of up to three
weeks was found. The findings are relevant for the development of
mitigation measures to prevent from environmental, agricultural and
economic issues due to climate change.