Dendroclimatological regions of Douglas fir ( Pseudotsuga menziesii Franco) in western Poland

Abstract

Six Douglas fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii Franco) stands were selected in both the Sudety Mountains and the Great Poland Lowland. These two regions are distinctly different with regard to thermal and pluvial conditions. In each stand, two increment cores per tree were extracted from 20 approximately 100-year-old trees and the tree-ring widths measured. It is clear from the different growth reactions of the study trees to the climatic conditions that the Sudety Mountains and the Great Poland Lowland are two dendrochronologically separate regions. The tree-ring width chronologies form homogeneous groups for each region. The tree ring-climate models for Douglas fir in both regions indicate similarities and differences. The similarities among chronologies are attributed to winter temperature. The differences are attributed to rainfall (which changes with longitude and altitude of sites) during the vegetation season.

Local Chronologies and Regional Diversity of Dendrochronological Signal of Douglas Fir in Poland

“…It should be mentioned that research concerning this species hitherto, and confirmed during this study, have indicated that air temperature of winter is the main factor similarly modeling magnitude of tree diameter increment in the entire area of Poland (Feliksik and Wilczyński, 1998a,b, 2002a, 2003a,b, 2004. This is the strongest climatic signal embedded in Douglas fir tree-rings.…”

“…3). This confirmed a known phenomenon of an inverse relationship between the chronology similarity and the distance between them (Müller-Stoll, 1951;Ermich, 1960;Feliksik, 1990;Zielski, 1997;Feliksik and Wilczyński, 1996, 2003aWilczyński and Skrzyszewski, 2002a). There were, however, cases when site chronologies did not show statistically significant similarity (Fig.…”

“…In this study, however, we did not wish to be concerned with a detailed interpretation of the climate -increment relationships. These relationships have been widely motivated in numerous papers dealing with ecology of Douglas fir (Suchocki, 1926;Schulman, 1947;Maciejowski, 1950Maciejowski, , 1951Jahn, 1955;Schober, 1963;Fritts, 1965Fritts, , 1974Białobok and Chylarecki, 1965;Tumiłowicz, 1967;Yao, 1971;Mejnartowicz, 1976;Chylarecki, 1976;Bellon et al, 1977;Harlow et al, 1979;Schober et al, 1983;Feliksik and Wilczyński, 1998a,b, 2000b, 2003aBiondi, 2000).…”

Inter-specific competition in mixed forests of Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) and common beech (Fagus sylvatica) under climate change — a model-based analysis

“…Dendroecological studies report that summer precipitation influences the increment of Douglas-fir in lowland, western Poland (Feliksik and Wilczynski, 2004) whereas radial growth of beech at low altitudes in continental climate (Dittmar et al, 2003) and in coastal climate (van der Werf et al, 2007) appears to be relatively insensitive to summer water shortage. In a central European context we define drought as a day or a sequence of days where the plant water demand exceeds plant available water.…”

Identification of meteorological conditions in the growth of Robinia pseudoacacia on the basis of pointer years in urban conditions

“…July droughts adversely affected the length of the shoots and tree ring widths in the trees, and so high rainfall in July, amounting to 126% of normal, significantly positively influenced the annual growth of black locust in the years 1955-2014, and contributed to its proper growth. Literature gives various limits for pointer years, usually ranging from 60% to 90% of trees (Feliksik & Wilczyński 2004;Poljanšek et al, 2012). The threshold value depends, among others, on the tree species, location, or the size of the tested sample (Wilczyński, 2004;Wilczyński & Szymański 2014).…”