Radial growth responses of Pinus halepensis Mill. and Pinus pinea L. forests to climate variability in Western Albania

Abstract

Abstract:In this study are presented chronologies of earlywood (EW), latewood (LW) and tree-ring widths (RW) of a Pinus halepensis (P. halepensis) and Pinus pinea (P. pinea) natural forest stand growing in western Albania. Bootstrapped correlations and pointer year analysis were combined in a dendroclimatological study to evaluate climate-growth relationships in both pine species as well as to assess the spatial outreach of our chronologies evaluating them with those of the same species from other Mediterranean countries. We found that both species responded positively to precipitation and Indexed Percentage Average Precipitation (%AvP) in late summer-early autumn, particularly the LW, whereas summer temperatures constrained the growth of P. halepensis tree-ring features. Current January temperature and Potential Evapotranspiration (PET) showed positive relationship with P. pinea LW and RW. The same association was observed when considering PET in spring and P. halepensis LW and RW. Pointer year analysis showed that inhibitory climatic drivers of radial growth for both species were low precipitation from previous winter and current summer, associated with low temperatures during autumn. Our P. halepensis chronology showed a wider spatial outreach than that of P. pinea when compared to those from other Mediterranean countries. We conclude that current January temperatures and September precipitation are very important for P. pinea growth influencing both EW and LW growth whereas P. halepensis is mostly affected by the summer-early autumn climate conditions.

Possibility of identification of negative extreme climatic events using Pinus sylvestris tree-rings in Transdanubia, Hungary

“…The above presented pattern of climate-growth relationship, namely the positive dominance of summer precipitation and negative impact of summer temperature was reported in other studies in Hungary on beech (Garamszegi & Kern, 2014) and on oak (Kern et al, 2013) and was observed many times on pine (Koprowski, 2012;Michelot, 2012;Panayotov et al, 2013;Levanič, 2015;Toromani et al, 2015) as well. However, we found a much unusual pattern also, which has never been observed in Hungary neither on pines nor on other species, but rare in the MJJ (May-June-July), JJA (June-July-August), SPR (March-April-May) and VGP (March-October) represent the combined periods, GWL shows groundwater data.…”

Climate impacts on radial growth and vegetation activity of two co-existing Mediterranean pine species

“…These findings on tree growth responses to climate are important since the Mediterranean area, as a transitional climate zone between humid and arid regions, is particularly sensitive to climate change (Mazza and Manetti 2013). However, in western Balkan, studies on climate-growth relationships of typical Mediterranean pine species are scarce (e.g., Sarris et al 2011;Toromani et al 2015a) and have not considered the early detection of forest dieback by means of cumulative scale drought indices as well as the drought impact on vegetation activity. This…”

Relationships between the dynamics of Pinus halepensis Mill. and Pinus sylvestris L. plantations and environmental parameters: a basis for sustainable management of stands

“…Therefore, water availability seems to be the most limiting factor for the species productivity in Spain, regardless of being within or outside the natural distribution of the species. Moreover, similar results were achieved by Rathgeber et al (2005) in Pinus halepensis stands in France, Klein et al (2014) and Maseyk et al (2011) in Israel andToromani et al (2015) in Albania, so this conclusion may be generalizable to the entire Mediterranean area.…”