Growth response of Scots pine to changing climatic conditions over the last 100 years: a case study from Western Hungary

Abstract

Key Message Climate change has a significant influence on the climate-growth relationship of Scots pine in Western Hungary, and this typically expressed as a decrease in the strength of the connection between treering width variation and climate data. Abstract This paper aims to expand our understanding of the climate-growth relationship of Scots pines in Transdanubia. Changes in the influence of climate on tree growth over various time-scales have been the subject of numerous investigations with pine trees, but these relationships have never been explored for Scots pines in Hungary. In this research, Pearson correlation values in 25-year moving windows were used to evaluate the temporal relationships of temperature, precipitation and tree-ring width variation, and additionally to investigate how these might be connected to climate change between 1915 and 2014. In the cases of summer precipitation and late winter-early spring temperature, our results detected a significant positive influence on the tree-ring width development of those Scots pines at our study sites. Furthermore, intensive warming over the last 100 years has resulted in a changing relationship between tree-ring width variation and climate data. In this study, the temporal instability of the climategrowth relationship was observed in every important month of tree-ring growth, and the response of growth to climate declined sharply in most of the studied periods. This indicates that ongoing climate change has already altered the Communicated by S. Leavitt.

Differences in the Climate-Growth Relationship of Scots Pine: A Case Study from Poland and Hungary

“…Over the course of a climate-growth relationship analysis, the temporal stability of the detected correspondence is always a core issue. In parallel with international trends [45][46][47], the climate at our study sites has changed significantly over the last 100 years, which has already had significant impact for Scots pine forests in Hungary [8,48,49] In spite of the increasing temperature in the February-March period, its role on tree-ring growth has been decreasing since the middle of the 20th century. At the same time as the warming, correlations in both months started to decline, and the temperature of February and March has become an insignificant factor in terms of tree-ring width variation.…”

“…Research conducted on the Iberian Peninsula and in Mongolia show that rainfall deficiency in summer can be the most limiting factor for species establishment in southernmost localities, with low summer rainfall directly leading to high mortality of seedlings [34][35][36]. Water deficiency in the warmest quarter is also important as a limiting factor for radial growth of this species [7,8,37,38]. This might be the most important reason behind the absence of native populations of Scots pine in Hungary.…”

“…In Poland, wide rings are formed especially when higher temperatures are observed in February and March and when there is precipitation during the vegetation season [4]. In Hungary, precipitation from June to July and temperatures from February to March, are the dominant controls with summer temperatures playing the secondary role [5][6][7][8]. In northeastern Germany wide rings are formed during wet/warm February and wet/cool June [9].…”

Changing climatic sensitivity and effects of drought frequency on the radial growth of Fagus sylvatica at the xeric frontiers of Central Europe

“…The partial correlation analysis in 31-year windows, however, also showed that the expected strengthening impact of climate on growth was not uniform among trees from different sites and considering monthly climate elements, but a varying sensitivity to climatic factors over time can be also concluded for all sites (Weber et al, 2013). Another study pointed out recent decreased climatic determination of Scots pine growth on the edge of its climatic tolerance in the vicinity of the REZI site (Misi and Náfrádi, 2017), that might be also applicable in case of REZI trees (and partially BAAP) during the last 31-year period, assuming the same climatic trends. This attribute of decreasing interannual growth-climate correlation does not necessarily contradict high climatic sensitivity in other terms though (cf., decreased drought resistance of REZI trees).…”

Magyarországi erdeifenyő állományok komplex dendroklimatológiai elemzése az elmúlt 100 év klímaváltozásának tükrében

“…Több faj esetében is megfigyelték, hogy a növekedési időszak kezdete korábbra tolódott (Koprowski 2013;de Luis et al 2014), valamint azt is, hogy az időtartama (Menzel-Fabian 1999) és az évgyűrűnövekedés dinamikája is több esetben módosult (D'Arrigo et al 2008;de Luis et al 2014). Amellett, hogy egyes esetekben az év bizonyos szakaszaiban történő hőmérséklet emelkedés pozitív befolyással bír a fák növekedésére (Churakova et al 2014), számos negatív hatást is kifejt, melyek hosszú távon többnyire a növekedési ráta csökkenésével járnak (Reich-Oleksyn 2008;Koprowski 2013;Bauwe et al 2015;Misi-Náfrádi 2016b, Misi-Náfrádi 2017.…”