Abstract
Context
Six Pinus pinea stands growing under the Mediterranean type climate in Italy along the Tyrrhenian and Sardinian coasts.
Aims
To identify the main climatic factors driving variability in growth responses to contrasting climate conditions at local and regional scales using tree-ring analysis.
Methods
Common growth patterns in tree rings were explored with clustering techniques. Local and regional growth responses to climate were examined using a dendroclimatic analysis. To remove the age-dependent trend we decomposed the tree ring width data into age-bands, thereafter standardised and recombined into a single mean site chronology.
Results
The main grouping of tree ring series reflected climate-driven growth patterns, with a clear separation between stands from wetter and drier sites. The most interesting results were found at a seasonal scale and showed i) a shift of the main precipitation inputs from previous autumn-winter to current early-spring period, and ii) a bimodal pattern of sensitivity to water availability, when increasing drought conditions.
Conclusion
Our findings suggest that water deficit limits P. pinea growth also during late summer months in drier sites. In view of the projected increases in the frequency and duration of summer droughts in the Mediterranean basin, detecting differences in growth responses to site-specific climate patterns may allow selection of more appropriate mitigation and conservation strategies across most of its present range.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Akkemik U (2000) Dendroclimatology of Umbrella pine (Pinus pinea L.) in Istanbul, Turkey. Tree-Ring Bull 56:17–20
Aussenac G, Granier A (1988) Effect of thinning on water stress and growth in Douglas fir. Can J For Res 18:100–105
Aussenac G, Valette JC (1982) Comportement hydrique estival de Cedrus atlantica Manetti, Quercus ilex L. et Quercus pubescens Willd. et de divers pins dans le Mont-Ventoux. Ann Sci For 39:41–62
Beguería S, Vicente-Serrano SM, Angulo M (2010) A multi-scalar global drought data set: the SPEIbase: a new gridded product for the analysis of drought variability and impacts. Bull Am Meteorol Soc 91:1351–1356
Briffa KR, Osborn TJ, Schweingruber FH, Harris I, Jones PD, Shiyatov SG, Vaganov EA (2001) Low-frequency temperature variations from a northern tree ring density network. J Geophys Res 106:2929–2941
Brunetti M, Maugeri M, Monti F, Nanni T (2006) Temperature and precipitation in Italy in the last two centuries from homogenised instrumental time series. Int J Climatol 26:345–381
Bunn AG (2010) Statistical and visual crossdating in R using the dplR library. Dendrochronologia 28:251–258
Campelo F, Nabais C, Freitas H, Gutiérrez E (2006) Climatic significance of tree-ring width and intra-annual density fluctuations in Pinus pinea from dry Mediterranean area in Portugal. Ann For Sci 64:229–238
Cherubini P (1993) Studio dendroecologico su Pinus pinea L. in due differenti stazioni sulla costa mediterranea. Dendrochronologia 11:87–99
Costantini EAC, Barbetti R, Fantappié M, L’Abate G, Lorenzetti R, Napoli R, Marchetti A, Rivieccio R (2014) The soil map of Italy: a hierarchy of geodatabases, from soil regions to sub-systems. In: Arrouays D, McKenzie N, Hempel J, Richer de Forges A, McBratney AB (Eds) GlobalSoilMap: basis of the global spatial soil information system. CRC Press, Boca Raton, pp 109–112
Cutini A, Chianucci F, Manetti MC (2013) Allometric relationships for volume and biomass for stone pine (Pinus pinea L.) in Italian coastal stands. iForest 6:331–335
Dai A, Trenberth KE, Qian T (2004) A global data set of Palmer drought severity index for 1870–2002: relationship with soil moisture and effects of surface warming. J Hydrometeorol 5:1117–1130
De Luis M, Novak K, Čufar K, Raventós J (2009) Size mediated climate–growth relationships in Pinus halepensis and Pinus pinea. Trees-Struct Funct 23:1065–1073
Frattegiani M, Mencuccini M, Mercurio R, Profili W (1994) Quantitative analysis of Stone pine (Pinus pinea L.) root systems morphology and its relationships with water table and soil characters. Investig Agrar Fuera Serie 3:405–416
Fritts HC (1976) Tree rings and climate. Academic Press, London
Galli M, Guadalupi M, Nanni T, Ruggiero L, Zuanni F (1992) Ravenna pine trees as monitors of winter severity in N-E Italy. Theor Appl Climatol 45:217–224
Hamed KH (2008) Trend detection in hydrologic data: The Mann–Kendall trend test under the scaling hypothesis. J Hydrol 349:350–363
Lebourgeois F, Mérian P, Courdier F, Ladier J, Dreyfus P (2012) Instability of climate signal in tree-ring width in Mediterranean mountains: a multi-species analysis. Trees 26:715–729
Linares JC, Delgado-Huertas A, Carreira JA (2010) Climatic trends and different drought adaptive capacity and vulnerability in a mixed Abies pinsapo–Pinus halepensis forest. Clim Chang 105:67–90
Lionello P, Malanotte-Rizzoli P, Boscolo R, Alpert P, Artale V, Li L, Luterbacher J, May W, Trigo R, Tsimplis M, Ulbrich U, Xoplaki E (2006) The Mediterranean climate: an overview of the main characteristics and issues. In: Lionello P, Malanotte-Rizzoli P, Boscolo R (eds) Mediterranean climate variability. Elsevier, Amsterdam, pp 1–26
Liphschitz N, Lev-Yadun S, Rosen E, Waisel Y (1984) The annual rhythm of activity of the lateral meristems (cambium and phellogen) in Pinus halepensis Mill. and Pinus pinea L. IAWA Bull 5:263–274
Martin-Vide J, Lopez-Bustins JA (2006) The Western Mediterranean Oscillation and rainfall in the Iberian Peninsula. Int J Climatol 26:1455–1475
Mazza G, Manetti MC (2013) Growth rate and climate responses of Pinus pinea L. in Italian coastal stands over the last century. Clim Chang 121:713–725
Mazza G, Amorini E, Cutini A, Manetti MC (2011) The influence of thinning on rainfall interception by Pinus pinea L. in Mediterranean coastal stands (Castel Fusano-Rome). Ann For Sci 68:1323–1332
Mutke S, Gordo J, Climent J, Gil L (2003) Shoot growth and phenology modelling of grafted Stone pine (Pinus pinea L.) in Inner Spain. Ann For Sci 60:527–537
Pasho E, Camarero JJ, de Luis M, Vicente-Serrano SM (2011) Impacts of drought at different time scales on forest growth across a wide climatic gradient in north-eastern Spain. Agric For Meteorol 151:1800–1811
Pasho E, Camarero JJ, de Luis M, Vicente-Serrano SM (2012) Factors driving growth responses to drought in Mediterranean forests. Eur J For Res 131:1797–1807
Piraino S, Camiz S, Di Filippo A, Piovesan G, Spada F (2013) A dendrochronological analysis of Pinus pinea L. on the Italian Mid-Tyrrhenian coast. Geochronometria 40:77–89
R Development Core Team (2008) R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing. Vienna Austria. http://cran.r-project.org/. Accessed 26 Oct 2012
Raddi S, Cherubini P, Lauteri M, Magnani F (2009) The impact of sea erosion on coastal Pinus pinea stands: A diachronic analysis combining tree-rings and ecological markers. For Ecol Manag 257:773–781
Raventós J, De Luis M, Gras MJ, Čufar K, González-Hidalgo JC, Bonet A, Sánchez JR (2001) Growth of Pinus pinea and Pinus halepensis as affected by dryness and marine spray in a semiarid sand dune ecosystem. Dendrochronologia 19:211–220
Sarris D, Christoduolakis D, Körner C (2011) Impact of recent climatic change on growth of low elevation eastern Mediterranean forest trees. Clim Chang 106:203–223
Schweingruber FH (1988) Tree rings: basics and applications of dendrochronology. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht
Tardif J, Camarero JJ, Ribas M, Gutiérrez E (2003) Spatiotemporal variability in tree growth in the central Pyrenees: climatic and site influences. Ecol Monogr 73:241–257
Teobaldelli M, Mencuccini M, Piussi P (2004) Water table salinity, rainfall and water use by umbrella pine trees (Pinus pinea L.). Plant Ecol 171:23–33
Vicente-Serrano SM, Beguería S, López-Moreno JI, Angulo M, El Kenawy A (2010) A new global 0.5° gridded dataset (1901–2006) of a multiscalar drought index: comparison with current drought index datasets based on the Palmer Drought Severity Index. J Hydrometeorol 11:1033–1043
Vila B, Vennetier M, Ripert C, Chandioux O, Liang E, Guibal F, Franck F (2008) Has global change induced divergent trends in radial growth of Pinus sylvestris and Pinus halepensis at their bioclimatic limit? The example of the Sainte-Baume forest (south-east France). Ann For Sci 65:709–718
Zang C, Biondi F (2013) Dendroclimatic calibration in R: The bootRes package for response and correlation function analysis. Dendrochronologia 31:68–74
Acknowledgments
This research was funded by the Municipality of Rome project “Management of stone pine (Pinus pinea L.) pinewood within the National Natural Reserve of the Roman Coast” and partially financed by the Italian Ministry of Agricultural and Forestry Policies project Ri.SELV.ITALIA – 3.1.1 “Management and conservation of stone pine coastal stands”. The research was also funded by Ente Foreste della Sardegna within the research project “Aboveground biomass and carbon equations of stone pine in Sardinia”. We are grateful to the personnel from Castelporziano Presidential Estate, Azienda Regionale di Alberese and Maremma Regional Park, and Ente Foreste della Sardegna for site access and collaboration. We also wish to thank the colleagues from the Forestry Research Centre (CRA-SEL) that helped in the field work and the two anonymous reviewers for their useful comments.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Handling Editor: Jean-Michel Leban
Contribution of the co-authors
Gianluigi Mazza conceived the ideas, collected and analysed the data, wrote the paper; Maria Chiara Manetti and Andrea Cutini collected the data and led the writing.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Mazza, G., Cutini, A. & Manetti, M.C. Site-specific growth responses to climate drivers of Pinus pinea L. tree rings in Italian coastal stands. Annals of Forest Science 71, 927–936 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13595-014-0391-3
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13595-014-0391-3