Climatic signal in tree‐ring width chronologies of conifers in European Russia

Abstract

Although European part of Russia is the largest forest-covered part of Europe, dendroclimatic data for high-resolution climate reconstructions are still scarce in this region. Climatic response of 62 tree-ring width chronologies of pine (Pinus sylvestris), spruce (Picea abies, Picea obovata) and larch (Larix sibirica) was analysed over a large area in the northern and central parts of European Russia (54-70 ∘ N, 29-57 ∘ E). The use of several climatic archives including the data from meteorological stations and gridded datasets allowed identifying the most important climatic parameters impacting the radial growth of conifers in the study region. Our results showed that all conifers growing to the north of 60 ∘ N react positively to summer temperature. To the south, at the latitude of 54-56 ∘ N, the signal is changing and the ring width depends on the combination of two parameters -warmth and humidity (precipitation, Palmer Drought Severity Index, soil moisture). These findings are in correspondence with analogous studies from nearby regions (Europe and Fennoscandia) and large-scale studies for the whole Northern Hemisphere. Although three genera of conifers were studied, pine is much better represented in the analysed network, and the results for spruce and larch have to be confirmed in further studies. The negative correlation of the spruce-ring width with the temperature of previous growing season has been defined for 16 of 17 studied chronologies.

Climate change evidence in tree growth and stand productivity at the upper treeline ecotone in the Polar Ural Mountains

“…In particular, thanks to our relation with long term climatic data, we suggest that the forest expansion was mainly caused by changes in the moisture regime and, to a lesser extent, by temperature. On one hand, the increase of 1.15 times of summer precipitation facilitated the mass emergence and better survival of seedlings which is consistent with the data for other areas of the Polar Ural (Mazepa 2005;Devi et al 2008;Kukarskih et al 2018) and northern Eurasian treelines (Vaganov et al 1996;Briffa et al 1998;Esper et al 2002;Matskovsky 2016). However, the lack of a strong relationship is related to the fact that the soil moisture content is usually sufficient for tree growth (Pan et al 2013).…”

Diverse growth trends and climate responses across Eurasia’s boreal forest

“…In this way we improved the spatial replication, particularly towards southern areas and further considered additional summer monthly and seasonal means, as well as a suite of slightly different tree-ring standardization and chronology development techniques. Although our study generally confirmed stronger TRW responses to summer temperatures at higher latitudes, it was spatially limited to reproduce the often reported response shift towards increased moisture sensitivity at around 60°N (Babst et al 2013, Seftigen et al 2015, Matskovsky 2016).…”

“…Results from network approaches for both, smaller areas in western Russia as well as the entire Northern Hemisphere , St. George and Ault 2014, Matskovsky 2016, revealed similar results, i.e. heterogeneous climate responses with overall increasing temperature sensitivity at higher latitudes.…”

Радіальний приріст ялини європейської (Picea abies L.) в осередку її всихання (Горгани, Українські Карпати)

“…Регіональна синхронізація радіального приросту первинного лісу Picea abies вздовж Карпатської дуги показала часові коливання приросту впродовж всього ХХ ст. Приріст дерев, загалом, збільшується із підвищенням температури, і є ознакою того, що ділянки гірських хребтів переходять від обмеження температури до обмеження вологості [14]. У Східних Карпатах обмежувальним фактором росту деревостанів ялини на всіх етапах сукцесії стає зимова посуха.…”