Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Diego Galván, J.
• Büntgen, Ulf
• Ginzler, Christian
• Grudd, Håkan
• Gutiérrez, Emilia
• Labuhn, Inga
• Julio Camarero, J.

Titel

Drought-induced weakening of growth–temperature associations in high-elevation Iberian pines

Ist Teil von

• Global and planetary change, 2015-01, Vol.124, p.95-106

Ort / Verlag

Elsevier B.V

Erscheinungsjahr

2015

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Alma/SFX Local Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• The growth/climate relationship of theoretically temperature-controlled high-elevation forests has been demonstrated to weaken over recent decades. This is likely due to new tree growth limiting factors, such as an increasing drought risk for ecosystem functioning and productivity across the Mediterranean Basin. In addition, declining tree growth sensitivity to spring temperature may emerge in response to increasing drought stress. Here, we evaluate these ideas by assessing the growth/climate sensitivity of 1500 tree-ring width (TRW) and 102 maximum density (MXD) measurement series from 711 and 74 Pinus uncinata trees, respectively, sampled at 28 high-elevation forest sites across the Pyrenees and two relict populations of the Iberian System. Different dendroclimatological standardization and split period approaches were used to assess the high- to low-frequency behavior of 20th century tree growth in response to temperature means, precipitation totals and drought indices. Long-term variations in TRW track summer temperatures until about 1970 but diverge afterwards, whereas MXD captures the recent temperature increase in the low-frequency domain fairly well. On the other hand summer drought has increasingly driven TRW along the 20th century. Our results suggest fading temperature sensitivity of Iberian high-elevation P. uncinata forest growth, and reveal the importance of summer drought that is becoming the emergent limiting factor of tree ring width formation in many parts of the Mediterranean Basin. •1500 TRW and 102 MXD series were collected at 30 sites across the Pyrenees.•Growth/climate relationships were assessed on high- to low-frequency domains.•Summer temperatures and MXD increased after the 1970s, whereas TRW decreased.•Warming-induced drought constraints on TRW formation increased along the 20th century.