Investigating the Climate-Growth Response of Scots Pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) in Northern Poland

Abstract

Research Highlights: This study used a 99-year time-series of daily climatic data to determine the climate-growth relationship for Scots Pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) growing in Northern Poland. The use of daily climatic data improved the calculated climatic response of the trees. Background and Objectives: It was hypothesised that daily temperature and precipitation data would more precisely identify climate–growth relationships than monthly data. We compared our results to a previous study conducted in the 1990s that utilised monthly precipitation and temperature data. Materials and Methods: The chronology construction and data analyses were performed using CooRecorder, CDendro and R packages (dplR, treeclim, dendrotools). Forty-nine cores from 31 trees were included in the final chronology. Results: The precipitation and temperature of March had the strongest influence upon ring-widths. Despite a statistically significant correlation between monthly temperature and ring-widths, reduction of error (RE) and coefficient of efficiency (CE) statistics confirmed that daily data better describe the effect of climate on tree rings width than monthly data. Conclusions: At this site, the growing season of Scots pine has changed with the observed association with precipitation now starting as early as February–March and extending to June–July.

Differences in Growth–Climate Relationships among Scots Pines Growing on Various Dune Generations on the Southern Baltic Coast

“…Pointer years determined for pine chronologies from the Pomeranian Bay coastal dunes are consistent with pointer years determined for pines from northern Poland [4,59,[67][68][69]. The dominant factor influencing tree-ring width is the February and March air temperature-e.g., the year 1940 is characterized by very narrow tree-rings over most of Poland [4,59,67,70,71].…”

“…Pointer years determined for pine chronologies from the Pomeranian Bay coastal dunes are consistent with pointer years determined for pines from northern Poland [4,59,[67][68][69]. The dominant factor influencing tree-ring width is the February and March air temperature-e.g., the year 1940 is characterized by very narrow tree-rings over most of Poland [4,59,67,70,71]. This was due to a very cold winter: in comparison to a multi-year average, the temperature of January 1940 was about 9 • C lower, February-over 8 • C lower, and March-over 2.5 • C lower.…”

“…Late winter and early spring temperature is the dominant climatic factor shaping tree-ring widths in Scots pine on the Southern and Eastern Baltic coasts [4,8,11,22,25,26,58,59]. The lack of strong frost in January, and especially in February, and an early and warm spring (March) result in good health of the trees, and the formation of broad tree-rings.…”

“…An early onset of spring (temperature increase in March, lack of frost) extends the vegetation season and favors an acceleration of metabolic processes and cambial activity [6,27,60]. At numerous sites, Scots pines (especially those growing on sands) also display sensitivity to rainfall sums in summer (June-August) [20,26,59]. During summer droughts, sandy soils, which are characterized by high permeability and most frequently There are, however, considerable changes in the growth-climate response depending on the type/age of the dune.…”

Climatically induced anomalies in tree-ring structure of Abies pindrow (Royal ex D. Don) and Taxus baccata (L.) growing in Hindu-Kush mountainous region of Pakistan

“…Due to these climatic extremes, Hindu-Kush Himalayan region is one of the most susceptible regions. Due to annual resolution and precise dating dendrochronological methods are being widely used to investigate the past climate changes (Waszak et al 2021). Himalayan dry temperate mixed broad leaf forests occur at elevation between 1700-3300 m above sea level.…”