scholarly journals A Tree-Ring-Based Assessment of Pinus armandii Adaptability to Climate Using Two Statistical Methods in Mt. Yao, Central China during 1961–2016

Forests ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
pp. 780
Author(s):  
Jianfeng Peng ◽  
Jingru Li ◽  
Jinbao Li ◽  
Xuan Li ◽  
Jiayue Cui ◽  
...  

Assessing the characteristics and limiting factors of tree growth is of practical significance for environmental studies and climatic reconstruction, especially in climate transition zones. In this study, four sites of Pinus armandii Franeh are investigated to understand regional climate-tree growth response in Mt. Yao, central China. Based on the high similarity of four residual chronologies and high correlations between chronologies and climatic factors, we analyzed the correlations of regional residual chronology with monthly climatic factors and the self-calibrating Palmer Drought Severity Index (scPDSI) from 1961–2016. The results indicate that the hydrothermal combination of prior August and current May and the scPDSI in May are main limiting factors of regional tree growth in Mt. Yao. The results of stepwise regression models also show that temperature and scPDSI in May are the main limiting factors of tree growth, but the limiting effect of scPDSI is more than temperature in this month. Through the analysis of the number of tree growth years corresponding to high temperature and high scPDSI, it was further confirmed that scPDSI in May is the main limiting factor on the growth of P. armandii in Mt. Yao. However, the influence of scPDSI in May has weakened, while temperature in May has increasingly significant influence on tree growth. The above findings will help improve our understanding of forest dynamics in central China under global climate change.

Author(s):  
Yanyu Zhang ◽  
Shuying Zang ◽  
Xiangjin Shen ◽  
Gaohua Fan

Precipitation during the main rain season is important for natural ecosystems and human activities. In this study, according to daily precipitation data from 515 weather stations in China, we analyzed the spatiotemporal variation of rain-season (May–September) precipitation in China from 1960 to 2018. The results showed that rain-season precipitation decreased over China from 1960 to 2018. Rain-season heavy (25 ≤ p < 50 mm/day) and very heavy (p ≥ 50 mm/day) precipitation showed increasing trends, while rain-season moderate (10 ≤ p < 25 mm/day) and light (0.1 ≤ p < 10 mm/day) precipitation showed decreasing trends from 1960 to 2018. The temporal changes of precipitation indicated that rain-season light and moderate precipitation displayed downward trends in China from 1980 to 2010 and rain-season heavy and very heavy precipitation showed fluctuant variation from 1960 to 2018. Changes of rain-season precipitation showed clear regional differences. Northwest China and the Tibetan Plateau showed the largest positive trends of precipitation amount and days. In contrast, negative trends were found for almost all precipitation grades in North China Plain, Northeast China, and North Central China. Changes toward drier conditions in these regions probably had a severe impact on agricultural production. In East China, Southeast China and Southwest China, heavy and very heavy precipitation had increased while light and moderate precipitation had decreased. This result implied an increasing risk of flood and mudslides in these regions. The advance in understanding of precipitation change in China will contribute to exactly predict the regional climate change under the background of global climate change.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giovanna Battipaglia ◽  
Francesco Niccoli ◽  
Arturo Pacheco-Solana

&lt;p&gt;Climate-induced forest mortality is a critical issue in the Mediterranean basin, with major consequences for the functioning of these key ecosystems. Indeed, in Mediterranean ecosystems, where water stress is already the most limiting factor for tree performance, climatic changes are expected to entail an increase in water deficit. In this context, annual growth rings can provide short- (e.g., years) and long-term (e.g., decades) information on how trees respond to drought events. With climate change, &lt;em&gt;Pinus pinaster&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Pinus pinea&lt;/em&gt; L. are expected to reduce their distribution range in the region, being displaced at low altitudes by more drought tolerant taxa such as sub Mediterranean &lt;em&gt;Quercus&lt;/em&gt; spp.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;This study aims was to assess the physiological response of &lt;em&gt;Pinus&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Quercus&lt;/em&gt; species growing in the Vesuvio National park, located in Southern Italy and where an increase of temperature and drought events has been recorded in the recent years. Our preliminary results underlined the importance of temperature on the tree ring width of all the analyses species. The high temperatures can cause a change in the constant kinetics of the RuBisCo, leading to a consequent decrease in carboxylation rate and thus to a reduction in tree growth. On the other hand, also precipitation seemed to affect the growth of the sampled trees: indeed, in all the chronologies a reduction in growth was found after particular dry years: for example, the low rainfall in 1999 (455 mm/year) determined a drastic decline in growth in 2000 in all the species. In addition to the climatic factors, competition can also play an important role in the growth rate: dendrochronological analyzes have highlighted how stand specific properties (i.e. density, structure and composition) can influence individual tree responses to drought events. The knowledge of those researches should be integrated into sustainable forest management strategies to minimize the potential impacts of climate change on forest ecosystems.&lt;/p&gt;


Atmosphere ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (8) ◽  
pp. 839
Author(s):  
Liang Shi ◽  
Guangxin Li ◽  
Hongyan Liu ◽  
Jeffery P. Dech ◽  
Mei Zhou ◽  
...  

Droughts are a recurrent phenomenon in the semiarid forest-steppe ecotone of Mongolia with negative consequences for tree growth and agricultural management. In order to better cope with the uncertainty of a changing climate, the study of historical drought and its effects on forests could provide useful insights into ecosystem responses to climate variability. Siberian larch (Larix sibirica) is a dominant tree species in Western Mongolia that provides a valuable source of proxy data in the form of annual rings. We used dendrochronological techniques to establish a standard master chronology and analyze the relationship between annual ring widths and climatic factors. Correlation analyses revealed that the strongest associations of tree-ring index (TRI) values for the master chronology to direct climate variables were June temperature (r = −0.36, p < 0.01) and precipitation (r = 0.39, p < 0.01). The master chronology was strongly correlated to Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) for June (r = 0.606, p < 0.001), and this variable (PDSIJun) was chosen for reconstruction. A simple linear regression of PDSIJun based on TRI explained 35.4% of the total variance for the period 1965–2016 and based on this model the PDSIJun changes from 1731–2016 were reconstructed. Split–sample calibration–verification tests were conducted to evaluate the quality of the model used for climate reconstruction. In the past 286 years, the number of non-drought years (PDSI > 0) was low, with a frequency of only 14.1% of the total reconstruction years. Extreme drought (PDSIJun < −2.70) occurred frequently in the 19th and early and late 20th centuries. Multi-taper method (MTM) spectra and wavelet analysis showed that the reconstructed PDSI series had high and low frequency periods (2.4–3.3 and 85–92 years). Our findings provide an understanding of the drought history of the semiarid forest-steppe ecotone of western Mongolia.


2014 ◽  
Vol 15 (5) ◽  
pp. 2039-2049 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark R. Jury

Abstract Hydrological fluctuations of Malawi’s Shire River and climatic drivers are studied for a range of time and space scales. The annual cycles of basin rainfall and river flow peak in summer and autumn, respectively. Satellite and model products at &lt;50-km resolution resolve the water deficit in this narrow valley. The leading climate index fitting Shire River flow anomalies is the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) Palmer drought severity index, based on interpolated gauge rainfall minus Penman–Monteith potential evapotranspiration. Climate variables anticipate lake level changes by 2 months, while weather variables anticipate river flow surges by 2 days. Global climate patterns related to wet years include a Pacific La Niña cool phase and low pressure over northeastern Africa. Shire River floods coincide with a cyclonic looping wind pattern that amplifies the equatorial trough and draws monsoon flow from Tanzania. Hot spells are common in spring: daytime surface temperatures can reach 60°C causing rapid desiccation. An anticyclonic high pressure cell promotes evaporation losses of ~20 mm day−1 over brief periods. Flood and drought in Malawi are shown to be induced by the large-scale atmospheric circulation and rainfall in the surrounding highlands. Hence, early warning systems should consider satellite and radar coverage of the entire basin.


2018 ◽  
Vol 91 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-95 ◽  
Author(s):  
Magdalena Opała-Owczarek ◽  
Tadeusz Niedźwiedź

AbstractWe developed a 1108 yr chronology of tree-ring widths, based on 64 Himalayan pencil juniper (Juniperus semiglobosa Regel) trees, for the Pamir-Alay Mountains, central Asia. Dendroclimatological analysis demonstrates that precipitation has significant effects on tree growth in the semiarid mountainous area of northwestern Tajikistan located on the edge of the great midlatitude Karakum and Kyzylkum deserts. The highest level of linear correlation (r=0.67) is observed between tree growth and seasonalised winter (previous December–February) precipitation. Our studies also show that moisture (precipitation/Palmer Drought Severity Index) from the previous June to the current September was the dominant climatic factor accounting for interannual variations in tree-ring width, suggesting that this should be considered in climate reconstruction. Using the transfer function method, we reconstructed the region’s drought history over the period AD 908–2015. The results of this moisture reconstruction showed that the most recent millennium was characterised by series of dry and wet stages. The driest periods occurred before 1000, 1200–1250, and at the end of the eighteenth century and beginning of the nineteenth century. The wettest conditions existed in 1650–1700 and after 1990.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaoli Yang

&lt;p&gt;Global climate change not only affects the processes within the water cycle but also leads to the frequent occurrences of local and regional extreme drought events. In China, spatial and temporal characterizations of drought events and their future changing trends are of great importance in water resources planning and management. In this study, we employed self-calibrating Palmer drought severity index (SC-PDSI), cluster algorithm, and severity-area-duration (SAD) methods to identify drought events and analyze the spatial and temporal distributions of various drought characteristics in China using observed data and CMIP5 model outputs. Results showed that during the historical period (1961&amp;#8211;2000), the drought event of September 1965 was the most severe, affecting 47.07% of the entire land area of China, and shorter duration drought centers (lasting less than 6 months) were distributed all over the country. In the future (2021&amp;#8211;2060), under both RCP[CF1]&amp;#160; 4.5 and RCP 8.5 scenarios, drought is projected to occur less frequently, but the duration of the most severe drought event is expected to be longer than that in the historical period. Furthermore, drought centers with shorter duration are expected to occur throughout China, but the long-duration drought centers (lasting more than 24 months) are expected to mostly occur in the west of the arid region and in the northeast of the semi-arid region.&lt;/p&gt;


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marina Fonti ◽  
Olga Churakova (Sidorova) ◽  
Ivan Tychkov

&lt;p&gt;Air temperature increase and change in precipitation regime have a significant impact on northern forests leading to the ambiguous consequences due to the complex interaction between the ecosystem plant components and permafrost. One of the major interests in such circumstances is to understand how tree growth of the main forest species of the Siberian North will change under altering climatic conditions. In this work, we applied the process-based Vaganov-Shashkin model (VS - model) of tree growth in order to estimate the daily impact of climatic conditions on tree-ring width of larch trees in northeastern Yakutia (Larix cajanderi Mayr.) and eastern Taimyr (Larix gmelinii Rupr. (Rupr.) for the period 1956-2003, and to determine the extent to which the interaction of climatic factors (temperature and precipitation) is reflected in the tree-ring anatomical structure. Despite the location of the study sites in the harsh conditions of the north, and temperature as the main limiting factor, it was possible to identify a period during the growing season when tree growth was limited by lack of soil moisture. The application of the VS-model for the studied regions allowed establishing in which period of the growing season the water stress is most often manifest itself, and how phenological phases (beginning, cessation, and duration of larch growth) vary among the years.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The research was funded by RFBR, Krasnoyarsk Territory and Krasnoyarsk Regional Fund of Science, project number 20-44-240001 and by the Russian Ministry of Science and Higher Education (projects FSRZ-2020-0010).&lt;/p&gt;


2016 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 1269-1285 ◽  
Author(s):  
Darren L. Ficklin ◽  
John T. Abatzoglou ◽  
Scott M. Robeson ◽  
Anna Dufficy

Abstract Global climate models (GCMs) have biases when simulating historical climate conditions, which in turn have implications for estimating the hydrological impacts of climate change. This study examines the differences in projected changes of aridity [defined as the ratio of precipitation (P) over potential evapotranspiration (PET), or P/PET] and the Palmer drought severity index (PDSI) between raw and bias-corrected GCM output for the continental United States (CONUS). For historical simulations (1950–79) the raw GCM ensemble median has a positive precipitation bias (+24%) and negative PET bias (−7%) compared to the bias-corrected output when averaged over CONUS with the most acute biases over the interior western United States. While both raw and bias-corrected GCM ensembles project more aridity (lower P/PET) for CONUS in the late twenty-first century (2070–99), relative enhancements in aridity were found for bias-corrected data compared to the raw GCM ensemble owing to positive precipitation and negative PET biases in the raw GCM ensemble. However, the bias-corrected GCM ensemble projects less acute decreases in summer PDSI for the southwestern United States compared to the raw GCM ensemble (from 1 to 2 PDSI units higher), stemming from biases in precipitation amount and seasonality in the raw GCM ensemble. Compared to the raw GCM ensemble, bias-corrected GCM inputs not only correct for systematic errors but also can produce high-resolution projections that are useful for impact analyses. Therefore, changes in hydroclimate metrics often appear considerably different in bias-corrected output compared to raw GCM output.


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