Climatic signals in earlywood, latewood and total ring width of Corsican pine from western France

Abstract

-The influence of climatic factors on the growth of Corsican pine, growing at low elevation on acidic well-drained soils in western France, was evaluated by comparing annual earlywood, latewood and total ring indices with monthly temperature and precipitation data collected at Angers over the period . Latewood formation appeared to be more sensitive to climate than earlywood formation. Pointer years analysis and climatic models showed that summer drought was a major limiting-growth factor in the studied area. Extreme growth reductions specially highlighted the effects of low precipitation whereas response functions clearly underlined the importance of temperature. The climatic models accounted for 46%, 37% and 42% of the variability of total ring, earlywood and latewood indices, and suggested that the period of earlywood formation occurred mainly in early spring (May) whereas the growth of the latewood band was maximum in summer (July). Winter photosynthesis and the advance in the timing of the resumption of cambial activity were possible causes of the positive winter temperature correlation with earlywood. A cool and wet spring was also beneficial to growth as it affected the water balance of the trees at the beginning of the growing season. Prior October weather conditions also influenced growth, suggesting a preconditioning of the current year's growth by climate during the previous year. The regional climatic data revealed: no change in precipitation and thermal amplitude between 1950-1997; a significant (α = 0.01) increase in mean annual temperature of 1.1°C, mean annual minimum temperature (1.5°C), mean summer (July-August) temperature (2.2°C) and minimum summer temperature (2.3°C). By increasing summer water stress, a steady rise may induce growth decrease and probably forest decline in the next years. These results should be taken into account when predicting possible responses of Corsican pine plantations to global change Pinus nigra / climate / global change / pointer years / earlywood / latewood / ring width / Corsican pine Résumé -Analyse dendroclimatique du pin laricio de Corse dans l'ouest de la France. L'effet du climat sur la croissance de peuplements de pin laricio de Corse poussant à faible altitude sur des sols acides et bien drainés dans l'ouest de la France a été évalué en comparant la croissance annuelle du bois initial, du bois final et du cerne complet avec les données mensuelles de température et de précipitation collectées à Angers sur la période 1922-1991. La formation du bois final est apparue plus sensible au climat que celle du bois initial. L'analyse des années caractéristiques et des modèles climatiques a montré que la sécheresse estivale jouait un rôle majeur dans les variations inter-annuelles de croissance. Les réductions extrêmes de croissance sont liées aux faibles précipitations tandis que les fonctions de réponse soulignent le rôle de la température. Les modèles climatiques expliquent entre 37 et 46 % de la variabilité inter-annuelle de la croissance selon le compa...

Black pine (Pinus nigra Arn.) growth divergence along a latitudinal gradient in Western Mediterranean mountains

“…Our finding of highly significant relationships between tree radial growth of the majority of black pine and summer temperature (negative) and hydrological year (September to June) cumulative precipitation (positive) is consistent with previous results for the Mediterranean (Andreu et al, 2007;Macias et al, 2006;Sarris et al, 2007) and for the same species in other parts of Europe (Leal et al, 2008;Lebourgeois, 2000). Although in our study these relationships were observed along the latitudinal range in the Iberian Peninsula, intra-annual differences were also observed between regions (i.e.…”

Climate-tree-growth relationships ofQuercus petraeaMill. stand in the Forest of Bercé (“Futaie des Clos”, Sarthe, France)

“…The pointer years analysis provides information on an individual year basis and can be considered as a supplement to the calculation of linear regression models [43,48]. The combination of these different procedures gives the most comprehensive dendroclimatological information [30]. In this study, the three methods clearly showed that the radial growth of old sessile oak trees, growing at low elevation on acidic soil in the Forest of Bercé, is mainly controlled by current spring hydric balance and previous autumn conditions.…”

“…The pointer years were defined for each ring component as those calendar years when at least 75% of the rings were at least 10% narrower or wider than the previous year. Thus, each pointer year was expressed as a relative growth changes in % [2,30]. Absolute dating was checked by program COFECHA [24] which identifies all locations within each ring series that may have erroneous cross-dating.…”

Dendrochronology of pedunculate oak (Quercus robur L.) in an old-growth pollarded woodland in northern Spain: tree-ring growth responses to climate

“…Calculations were done using the routine RESBO in the program PRECONK version 5.11 (written by H.C. Fritts, Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research, University of Arizona). This includes a bootstrap method to assess statistical significance of the regression coefficients in response functions [22,29,48]. In this work, 1000 iterations were computed to estimate the confidence intervals of regression coefficients (P < 0.05).…”