Modeling long-term tree growth curves in response to warming climate: test cases from a subtropical mountain forest and a tropical rainforest in Mexico

Abstract

The Earth’s temperature has increased 0.6 °C over the last 100 years, and further climate change is predicted to potentially raise it by 3.5 °C over the next century. More than half of the global annual net primary production of biomass is estimated to occur in the tropics, especially tropical evergreen forest. In temperate forests, increasing temperature may extend the non-frost growing season, and thus increase the CO2 sequestration rate, but some authors have also suggested a negative impact of warming in tropical forests from decreased photosynthetic activity. Using the PL model (Ricker and del Río 2004), we forecast growth of two Mexican tree species after climate warming. The model predicts the high-mountain species Pinus hartwegii Lindl. to decrease its expected relative growth throughout its lifetime by 10.6% as a consequence of a 0.6 °C temperature increase; in contrast, the tropical rainforest species Diospyros digyna Jacq. is predicted to increase its expected relative growth throughout its lifetime by 25.4%. The key factor appears to be the expected relationship between temperature and precipitation, rather than temperature alone. While one cannot expect a universal response across sites, some standing tropical rainforests such as those at Los Tuxtlas in Mexico may constitute a carbon sink in a changing climate.

Biodiversity monitoring: some proposals to adequately study species’ responses to climate change

“…individuals), to formulate theories about their behaviour, to incorporate these hypothetical behaviours into a simulation model, and to observe the emergence of properties at the system level related to some particular questions (Grimm and Railsback 2005). Few of these models are concerned by making predictions on the evolution of life history traits (Jiguet et al 2007;Ricker et al 2007) or about genetic variation (Ditto and Frey 2007). Population viability analyses (PVA; e.g.…”

Altitudinal genetic variation in Pinus hartwegii Lindl. I: Height growth, shoot phenology, and frost damage in seedlings

“…Nevertheless, in the case of P. hartwegii the possibilities of migration are limited, since the high parts of the mountains are generally isolated among themselves (there is no natural connection among them), which might prevent the displacement of the populations. Furthermore, it has been estimated that the increase of temperature by 0.6 8C in the last 100 years has caused a diminution by 10.6% in its relative growth (Ricker et al, 2007).…”

Carbon stock and change from woody biomass on Canada’s cropland between 1990 and 2000

“…Due to lack of information, we assume a linear growth rate through the growth cycle; hence the same annual growth rate was used for both regrowth and the natural growth of woody volume, although this might not always be the case (Ricker et al, 2007;Bontemps and Duplat, 2012). The observed change in area of a species was evenly apportioned over 10 years, as no information regarding the specific year of change could be determined from the photo plots.…”