The Inter-Annual Growth Characteristics of Rhododendron spp. Shrubs in Mt. Halla, Jeju Island, Korea Based on Their Tree Rings

Abstract

The Rhododendron spp. (R. yedoense and R. mucronulatum) at high elevations of Mt. Halla in Jeju Island are the dominant species in the shrubland. Despite the recent damage to their growth due to climate change and the spread of Sasa spp., these species have not yet been studied systematically in Korea. Therefore, the current study aimed to verify the effect of abiotic factors, e.g., temperature and precipitation, and the spread of Sasa spp. as a neighbor species on their growth based on ring-width measurement data. In addition, the death years were dated using the cross-dating method developed in dendrochronology by comparing the individual ring-width time series from dead Rhododendron spp. with the corresponding chronology established using living trees. For the study, disk samples were obtained from 11 and 10 living R. yedoense and R. mucronulatum, respectively, to establish tree-ring time series. To investigate the death years, six disk samples were also collected from each shrub species. The relatively high occurrence of missing or discontinuous rings is a characteristic of shrubs, which makes tree-ring analysis difficult. Through cross-dating, it was verified that the R. mucronulatum and R. yedoense have 4.3% and 5.3% missing and/or discontinuous rings (the total number of missing and/or discontinuous rings/the total number of tree rings), respectively. All dead shrubs were successfully dated based on synchronization of the individual time series with the corresponding chronologies established using the cross-dated time series; nine shrubs died in the 2010s and the other two shrubs in 1996 and 2001, respectively. Most deaths occurred when Sasa quelpaertensis dominantly occupied the study sites. From the analysis of the relationships between the residual chronologies and the bioclimate predictors (BioClim), only R. mucronulatum showed reliable correlations with the Bio5 (maximum temperature of the warmest month) as +0.28 (p < 0.05) and the Bio18 (precipitation of warmest quarter) as −0.33 (p < 0.05). This result means that summer temperature is a limiting factor for the growth of R. mucronulatum. Through this study, it was verified that Rhododendron spp. at high elevations in Korea can be used for research using tree rings.