Growth-climate relationships at yew and wild service trees on the eastern edge of their range in Europe

Abstract

<p><em>Aim of study</em>: The aim of the study was the construction of regional chronologies for South-Western Poland for yew (<em>Taxus baccata</em> L.) and wild service tree (<em>Sorbus torminalis</em> L.), two of the rarest native tree species on the edge of their range in Europe. The relationships growth-climate and incremental dynamics at both these species were investigated as well.</p><p><em>Area of study:</em> The eastern borders of the ranges of yew and wild service trees run across Poland. The majority of the yew occurrence sites are situated in South Poland, within the area of uplands and mountains, whereas the wild service tree grows in the western part of the country. The study plots (5 for yew trees, 4 for wild service trees) were located in nature reserves in SW Poland.</p><p><em>Material and Methods</em>: The research materials were cores from 200 trees (115 yew trees and 85 wild service trees). The annual growth widths were measured, then, local chronologies were constructed using classic methods of dating. Regional chronologies were based on yew trees with the Student’test t > 6.0, and wild service trees with t > 5.9. The chronologies were subjected to the indexation and used for dendroclimatological analyses: pointer years, correlation and response function.</p><p><em>Main results</em>: The yew chronology, spanning 219 years (1790-2008), was established on the basis of 51 samples, the average width of annual growths amounted to 0.61 mm. The wild service tree chronology, representing the period 1841-2013 (173 years), was produced from 37 samples, the average width of annual growth amounted to 0.60 mm (from 0.27 up to 0.58 mm). Dendroclimatological analyses of the yew indicated thermal conditions of the winter months and beginning of spring (straight correlations) as the predominating factor affecting the annual growth widths. Summer drought was an additional factor limiting growth. For the wild service trees cool and humid summer months in the growing season favour the formation of wide growths.</p><p><em>Research highlights</em>: On account of strong dispersion and limited small populations of these two tree species, there are few dendrochronological studies available. Therefore, every piece of information on the ecology of the yew and wild service tree allows us to broaden our knowledge of these rare species enriching the biodiversity of the native tree flora.</p><p><strong>Keywords:</strong> tree-ring width; <em>Taxus baccata</em> L.; <em>Sorbus torminalis</em> L.; dendroclimatology; Poland.</p>

Assessing future suitability of tree species under climate change by multiple methods: a case study in southern Germany

“…There is still a lack of studies on the growth performance and drought sensitivity of minor Central European broadleaf tree species such Acer, Tilia, Carpinus and Sorbus species (Pyttel et al 2013, Gillner et al 2014. However, our results are in accordance with further dendroecological (Cedro & Cedro 2015, Klemmt et al 2015, Zimmermann et al 2015, Cedro 2016, as well as physiological studies (Tissier et al 2004, Nardini et al 2012, Kunz et al 2016 assessing the drought tolerance of minor tree species. Figure 2 shows that many of the more drought-tolerant species already play a dominant role in the broadleaf stands of the Franconian Plateau according to the NFI, especially Q. petraea and C. betulus.…”

“…These analyses of climate-growth relationships based on tree rings allows a long-term evaluation of tree growth under various climatic conditions (Fritts 1976, Cook 1987, Cook & Peters 1997 and hence a relative ranking of species according to drought tolerance (Friedrichs et al 2009, Zang et al, 2011, Michelot et al 2012, Cavin et al 2013. As there are only few dendroecological studies addressing less common tree species (Gillner et al 2014, Zimmermann et al 2015, Cedro & Cedro 2015, Klemmt et al 2015, Cedro, 2016, a multiple methods approach seems to be promising to assess the future suitability for those species (Piedallu et al 2013, Fensham et al 2014.…”

Growth drivers of monumental wild service tree (Sorbus torminalis) out of its natural range in Kyiv, Ukraine

“…Although the lifespan of S. torminalis is 200-300 years (Crave, 1985;Favre-d'Anne, 1990;Pokorny, 1990), the species is rarely used in dendrochronological studies due to difficulty in identifying annual ring boundaries particularly in sapwood and frequent formation of false rings (Cedro & Cedro, 2015;Cedro, 2016;Rasmussen, 2007). In forests, S. torminalis usually grows at the midstory (Shpak et al, 2017,), which decreases trees climatic signal in chronological series (Cook & Kairiukstis, 1990).…”

Using the International Tree-Ring Data Bank (ITRDB) records as century-long benchmarks for land-surface models

“…The wealth of approaches available for modelling tree ring growth (see the introduction for a summary) has been largely overlooked by the global land-surface community and until now, benchmarking land-surface models against ring-width records still relies mostly on interannual variation in the simulated net primary productivity as a proxy for TRW (Klesse et al, 2018;Kolus et al, 2019;Rammig et al, 2015;Zhang et al, 2018). Although such an approach is valid to benchmark the capability of land-surface models to simulate interannual variability, the observations will need to be detrended to remove the size-related growth signal, adding considerable uncertainty to the benchmark (Bunde et al, 2013;Cedro, 2016;Nicklen et al, 2019;Stine, 2019). Moving beyond the net primary production proxy by explicitly simulating TRW enriches the benchmark since potentially confounding factors including climate responses, forest structure, age and size trends (Alexander et al, 2018;Nickless et al, 2011), as well as sampling biases (Babst et al, 2014a), can be better accounted for.…”