Are living peatland trees a reliable natural archive for climate reconstruction?

Abstract

Peatland ecosystems are an important archive of paleoclimatic information. Within this context, tree-ring data from trees growing in such ecosystems are extremely valuable resources, and subfossil trees from peat bogs have been widely employed in dendroclimatological studies. However, there are still gaps in our understanding of the relationships among tree growth, peatland hydrology and climate factors. Here, we summarize the principal studies on living peatland trees, with a particular focus on their use as a source of information on past climatic conditions. We discuss the main factors influencing tree growth in this environment, whether it is the local hydrological cycle or climate. We put a particular focus on the reliability of the climate signal recorded by living peatland trees, comparing it with that found in subfossil trees. Finally, we discuss the relevance of quantitative wood anatomy in the context of peatland ecosystems research.

Climate and Human Impacts Inferred from a 1500-Year Multi-Proxy Record of an Alpine Peat Bog in the South-Eastern Alps

“…Moreover, the accumulation of organic matter allows measuring peat (= organic carbon) accumulation, a function of the rate of vegetation decay (Lindsay, 1995). Variations in peatland hydrology determine changes in the rate of peat accumulation/degradation (Cristea et al, 2014;Drollinger et al, 2020), affecting the survival of living organisms such as testate amoebae (Lamentowicz et al, 2008;Mitchell et al, 2008a) and peatland trees growing on the surface (Dinella et al, 2019).…”

“…How testate amoebae communities are assembled is linked to peatland hydrology and this information can be accordingly used as indicators of the degree of aridity/humidity of the ecosystem in response to local climate (Woodland et al, 1998;Mitchell et al, 2008b). In addition, both sub-fossil and living trees on peatlands can be used as proxies of past water table variations based on their tree-ring records (Edvardsson et al, 2016;Dinella et al 2019).…”