Title: Relationship between floristic similarity and vegetated land surface phenology: Implications for the synoptic monitoring of species diversity at broad geographic regions

1 Assessing species composition and its changes through time across broad 2 geographic regions are time consuming and difficult endeavors. The synoptic view 3 provided by imaging remote sensors offers an alternative. But while many studies have 4 developed procedures for assessing biodiversity using multiand hyper-spectral imagery, 5 they may only provide snapshots at particular months/seasons due to the seasonal 6 variability of spectral characteristics induced by vegetated land surface phenologies. 7 Thus, procedures for remotely assessing biodiversity patterns may not fully represent the 8 biodiversity on the ground if vegetated land surface phenologies are not considered. 9 Using Mantel tests, ordinarily least square regression models and spatial autoregressive 10 models, we assessed the relationship between floristic diversity and vegetated land 11 surface phenologies, as captured by time series of vegetation indices derived from data 12 acquired by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS). The 13 relationship was calibrated with data from temperate montane forests of the Qinling 14 Mountains region, Shaanxi Province, China. Our results show that floristically similar 15 areas also exhibit a comparable similarity in phenological characteristics. However, 16 phenological similarity obtained using the Visible Atmospherically Resistant Index 17 (VARI), a spectral vegetation index found to be not only sensitive to changes in 18 chlorophyll content but also linearly related with the relative content of foliar 19 anthocyanins, exhibited the strongest relationship with floristic similarity. Therefore, 20 analysis of the temporal dynamics of pigments through the use of satellite-derived 21 metrics, such as VARI, may be used for evaluating the spatial patterns and temporal 22 dynamics of species composition across broad geographic regions. 23