Yellow Cedar Growth Response to Decadal Climatic Shifts at Cedar Lake, Juneau, Alaska

Charlton, Joshua; Cruz, Alora Josephin; Lummus, Myron Malisse; Loadholt, Kerensa; Messerich, Christopher; Wiles, Gregory C.; Buma, Brian; Krapek, John

doi:10.1130/abs/2017am-298740

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The sites range in elevation from 110 to over 480 m (Table 1). For the Cedar Lake site, cores and ring-width data were obtained from other researchers (Beier et al, 2008; and combined with our collections from the summers of 2016 and 2017 (Charlton et al, 2017). The tree cores were immersed in acetone for 72 hours to remove resins in the wood (Rydval et al, 2014;Fuentes et al, 2018), then glued onto wood mounts and sanded to a high polish.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Yellow-cedar blue intensity tree-ring chronologies as records of climate in Juneau, Alaska, USA

et al. 2019

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This is the first study to generate and analyze the climate signal in blue intensity (BI) tree-ring chronologies from Alaska yellow-cedar (Callitropsis nootkatensis (D. Don) Oerst. ex D.P. Little). The latewood BI chronology shows a much stronger temperature sensitivity than ring width and can thus provide information on past climate. The well-replicated BI chronology exhibits a positive January–August mean maximum temperature signal for 1900–1975, after which it loses temperature sensitivity following the 1976–1977 shift in northeastern Pacific climate. The positive temperature response appears to recover and remains strong for the most recent decades, but the coming years will continue to test this observation. This temporary loss of temperature sensitivity from about 1976 to 1999 is not evident in ring width or in a change in forest health but is consistent with prior work linking cedar decline to warming. A confounding factor is the uncertain influence of a shift in color variation from the heartwood–sapwood boundary. Future expansion of the yellow-cedar BI network and further investigation of the influence of the heartwood–sapwood transitions in the BI signal will lead to a better understanding of the utility of this species as a climate proxy.

show abstract

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%