Size mediated climate-growth relationships in Pinus halepensis and Pinus pinea

Martin De Luis (Author), Klemen Novak (Author), Katarina Čufar (Author), Jose Raventós Bonvehi (Author)

Abstract

Functional processes in trees undergo changes as the tree size increases, which may affect the response of trees to environmental factors. We tested tree-ring response to climate in four groups of trees, including large and small Pinus halepensis and Pinus pinea trees using cluster, principal component (PC) and dendroclimatological analysis. The trees were of the same age and growing on a plantation in the semiarid coastal area of southern Spain. Cluster and PC analyses showed a clear separation into four groups of trees. Autocorrelation and mean sensitivity showed significant differences between the two size classes. PCA recognised four representative principal components where PC1 represented the tree-ring-climate variability common to both species and sizes, whereas PC2, PC3 and PC4 represented a species-specific and size-dependent response of trees to climate. The differences between the two size classes were greater than those between the two species. The results suggest that future tree-ring studies should include trees stratified by size. Only this would make it possible to produce unbiased predictions on the consequences of climate change and to devise suitable mitigation strategies for preserving Mediterranean forest ecosystems.

Keywords

tree size;dendrochronology;tree-rings;Aleppo pine;climate-growth response;Mediterranean;

Data

Language:	English
Year of publishing:	2009
Typology:	1.01 - Original Scientific Article
Organization:	UL BF - Biotechnical Faculty
UDC:	630*55
COBISS:	1741961
ISSN:	0931-1890
Views:	1134
Downloads:	431
Average score:	0 (0 votes)
Metadata:

Other data

Secondary language:	English
Type (COBISS):	Not categorized
Pages:	str. 1065-1073
Volume:	ǂVol. ǂ23
Issue:	ǂno. ǂ5
Chronology:	2009
ID:	1033427