Climate-tree growth relationships of Pinus sylvestris var. mongolica in the northern Daxing’an Mountains, China

doi:10.3724/SP.J.1258.2011.00294

Abstract

Abstract:

Aims Daxing’an Mountains, the northernmost and largest forest area in China, showed significant warming in the 20th century. Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris var. mongolica) is one of the two major conifer tree species in the boreal forests of these mountains. Our objective was to detect possible influence of climate change on boreal forests in this area through dendroclimatology.
Methods We investigated climate-growth relationships of Scots pine using tree ring-width chronologies (total of 139 cores) developed from Mohe, Mengkeshan and Mangui in the northern Daxing’an Mountains. Four residual chronologies were developed from the cross-dated ring width series using the program ARSTAN. The relationships between climate and tree-ring index were analyzed using bootstrapped response functions analysis of the software DENDROCLIM2002. Redundancy analysis (RDA), a multivariate “direct” gradient analysis, and its ordination axes are constrained to represent linear combinations of supplied environmental variables. It was carried out on the four Scots pine chronologies and 24 climate variables for 1973-2006 using the program CANOCO. STATISTICA for Windows, release 6.0 (StatSoft Inc., Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA) was used for other statistical analysis.
Important findings Tree growth from the four sites showed different responses to local climates. Response analysis showed that the chronologies of Mohe I and Mohe II were negatively correlated with June temperature of the current year, while the chronologies of Mangui and Mengkeshan were positively correlated with October temperature of the previous year. The analysis indicated that temperature is the major limiting factor for the growth of Scots pine in the northern Daxing’an Mountains. Redundancy analysis between four Scots pine chronologies and regional climate data verified this conclusion.

Key words: Pinus sylvestris var. mongolica, redundancy analysis, response function, the northern Daxing’an Mountains, tree ring

WANG Xiao-Chun, SONG Lai-Ping, ZHANG Yuan-Dong. Climate-tree growth relationships of Pinus sylvestris var. mongolica in the northern Daxing’an Mountains, China[J]. Chin J Plant Ecol, 2011, 35(3): 294-302.

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URL: https://www.plant-ecology.com/EN/10.3724/SP.J.1258.2011.00294

https://www.plant-ecology.com/EN/Y2011/V35/I3/294

Figures/Tables 8

Table 1 Sampling site information for four Pinus sylvestris var. mongolica chronologies from Mohe, Mangui and Mengkeshan in the northern Daxing’an Mountains

样点 Site	纬度 Latitude (N)	经度 Longitude (E)	海拔 Elevation (m)	样芯数量 Core numbers
漠河I Mohe I	53°01′52″	122°22′35″	601	31
漠河II Mohe II	53°08′47″	122°24′04″	622	36
满归 Mangui	52°02′55″	122°05′56″	714	34
蒙克山 Mengkeshan	52°37′12″	124°18′11″	720	38

Fig. 1 Variation of four residual chronologies (upper panel) and sample numbers (n ≥ 5) (lower panel) from Pinus sylvestris var. mongolica in the northern Daxing’an Mountains. The thick line is a smoothed 11-year moving average spline of tree-ring index. MH I, MH II, MG and MKS represent four sampling sites in Mohe, Mangui and Mengkeshan, respectively.

Table 2 General information of Mohe, Tahe and Yakeshi meteorological station in the northern Daxing’an Mountains

	漠河 Mohe	塔河 Tahe	牙克石 Yakeshi
纬度 Latitude (N)	53°28′	52°19′	50°29′
经度 Longitude (E)	122°22′	124°43′	121°41′
海拔 Elevation (m)	296	357	732
时间跨度 Span time	1959-2009	1972-2009	1957-2009
对应的采样点 Sampling site	漠河I MH I, 漠河II MH II	蒙克山 MKS	满归 MG
距采样点距离 Distance from sampling site (km)	48, 36	44	176

Fig. 2 Monthly mean temperature and total precipitation at Mohe, Tahe and Yakeshi meteorological stations. The suffix “T” and “P” represent temperature and precipitation, respectively.

Table 3 Major statistic characteristics for four residual chronologies of Pinus sylvestris var. mongolica from four sampling sites in the northern Daxing’an Mountains

	漠河I MH I	漠河II MH II	满归 MG	蒙克山 MKS
序列长度 Time span	1915-2008	1725-2008	1798-2008	1631-2007
平均敏感度 Mean sensitivity	0.12	0.19	0.16	0.13
标准偏差 Standard deviation	0.11	0.17	0.14	0.12
平均相关系数 Mean correlation coefficient	0.29	0.37	0.31	0.24
信噪比 Signal-to-noise ratio	11.2	12.8	12.2	9.7
样本代表性 Expressed population signal	0.92	0.93	0.92	0.91
第一特征根方差解释量 Variance in first eigenvector (%)	32.4	40.3	34.5	27.0

Table 4 Correlation matrix between four residual ring-width chronologies of Pinus sylvestris var. mongolica in the northern Daxing’an Mountains from 1928 to 2006 (p < 0.001)

	漠河I MH I	漠河II MH II	满归 MG
漠河II MH II	0.52
满归 MG	0.61	0.58
蒙克山 MKS	0.58	0.58	0.64

Fig. 3 Response functions analyses of four Pinus sylvestris var. mongolica residual chronologies with local monthly climate variables in the northern Daxing’an Mountains. The negative signs represent the previous year and the asterisks represent a significant (p < 0.05) effect of climate on tree-ring index. MH I, MH II, MG and MKS represent four sampling sites in Mohe, Mangui and Mengkeshan, respectively.

Fig. 4 Redundancy analyses (RDAs) calculated from the four residual chronologies of Pinus sylvestris var. mongolica in the northern Daxing’an Mountains (dash line vectors) and the monthly air temperature and precipitation (bold and thick line vectors) for the period 1973-2006, only significant climate factors were shown here. The longer the vector is the more important the climate parameter. The correlation between the variables is illustrated by the cosine of the angle between two vectors. Vectors pointing in nearly the same direction indicate a high positive correlation, vectors pointing in opposite directions have a high negative correlation, and vectors crossing at right angles are related to a near zero correlation. P = precipitation, T = air temperature, -1 = year before ring formation, and numbers represent months. MH I, MH II, MG and MKS represent four sampling sites in Mohe, Mangui and Mengkeshan, respectively.

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