3.3 Directional eco-effect
The exploitation of the directional eco-effect existing in the EP
responses of the LEP, AEP, and HEP ecosystems to the snow-onset, -end,
and both -onset&-end SP over the NH area was operated (Supplementary
Fig. 8), and so did for the NA (Supplementary Fig. 9) and NE
(Supplementary Fig. 10), with their directional eco-effects of the
snow-onset&-end SP-related case displayed in Fig. 7. The specific
leading directions along with latitudes in each of the cases were also
displayed (the inserted boxes in Fig. 7). The statistics of all of these
results are shown in Fig. 8, with the leading geo-grid ratios listed in
each case of combining the three traits – LEP, AEP, and HEP, the eight
directions in the correlation window, and the three regions of NH, NA,
and NE. Globally, the leading directions are distinctive between these
cases when regarding the directional eco-effect, especially for the
whole NH. Nevertheless, it still could be distinguished that in terms of
directional eco-effect, the EP-SP responses over the NA were more to
north while the NE more to south.
-Insert Fig. 7 here-
-Insert Fig. 8 here-
Overall, the derived neighborhood eco-effect and directional eco-effect
together can verify the applicability of the newly proposed
“periconnection” conceptual framework. After all, before its proposal,
it is quite difficult to get the inferences as did in this study. The
resulting 3.14%, 3.38%, and 3.46% (listed in Fig. 2d–f,
respectively), equivalently, relate to the potential derivations based
on the traditional attribution analysis methods (Winkler et al.,2018), and such low ratios cannot reflect the EP situations of the whole
continents in a statistical sense. Now, the creatively revealed
periconnection-related eco-effects can expose more reliable information
about the underlying rules of snow cover phenological variations
affecting ecosystem activities. Overall, the contributions of this study
are equal to opening a new way for investigating from ecology to Earth
interactions, and hence, we encouraged more uses of periconnection to
vigorously discover more about the causes, processes, evolutions, and
patterns of various natural phenomena in ecology, global change, and
Earth interaction in the future.