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Stable Isotopes in Dendroclimatology: Moving Beyond ‘Potential’

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Dendroclimatology

Part of the book series: Developments in Paleoenvironmental Research ((DPER,volume 11))

Abstract

When trees grow, they assimilate carbon from atmospheric carbon dioxide, and hydrogen and oxygen from soil water. The stable isotope ratios of these three elements carry signals that can be interpreted in terms of past climate because isotope ratios are climatically controlled by the tree’s water and gas exchange budgets. The traditional tree-ring proxies form the most widespread and arguably the most valuable of the high-resolution climate archives. Here we asses the added contribution that can be made to dendroclimatology using stable isotope measurements. We describe what is involved in measuring tree-ring stable isotopes, provide a brief review of progress to date, and point to the ways in which stable isotope dendroclimatology can be used to provide something new. We conclude that stable isotope ratios sometimes provide stronger climate signals than the traditional proxies, which can be useful where sample replication is limited. Stable isotopes can also be used to access different climate signals in trees, providing a more synoptic view of past climate and may also have the potential to provide a greater proportion of the lower-frequency climate signal that is difficult to retain during statistical detrending of tree-ring width series. The use of stable isotopes may also pave the way to extracting climate signals from ringless tropical trees. We highlight the need for stable isotope dendroclimatology to move beyond papers that simply demonstrate ‘potential’ and to being to reconstruct the climate of the past. We suggest that this should be done in collaboration, not in competition, with traditional dendroclimatology.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the European Union project 017008-2 GOCE (MILLENNIUM). MHG was supported by a RCUK Fellowship. NJL was supported by the NERC NE/B501504/1 and NE/C511805/1. The authors thank our colleagues at the Tree Ring Group at Swansea University and N. Jones, and A. Ratcliffe (Swansea) for their invaluable assistance.

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  1. Department of Geography, School of the Environment and Society, Swansea University, Singleton Park, Swansea, SA2 8PP, UK

    Mary Gagen, Danny McCarroll, Neil J. Loader & Iain Robertson

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  1. Mary Gagen
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  2. Danny McCarroll
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  3. Neil J. Loader
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  4. Iain Robertson
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Correspondence to Mary Gagen .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research, University of Arizona, Tucson, 85721, Arizona, USA

    Malcolm K. Hughes

  2. , Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research, University of Arizona, Tucson, 85721, Arizona, USA

    Thomas W. Swetnam

  3. , CIRES, University Colorado, Broadway 325, Boulder, 80305-3328, Colorado, USA

    Henry F. Diaz

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Gagen, M., McCarroll, D., Loader, N.J., Robertson, I. (2011). Stable Isotopes in Dendroclimatology: Moving Beyond ‘Potential’. In: Hughes, M., Swetnam, T., Diaz, H. (eds) Dendroclimatology. Developments in Paleoenvironmental Research, vol 11. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-5725-0_6

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