Abstract
Key message
Both temperature and precipitation are strong factors of radial tree growth at all elevations in the semi-arid study area, except at the upper treeline where temperature becomes the major controlling factor.
Abstract
Several recent studies across the Tibetan Plateau found consistent growth–climate relations at all elevations from the lower treelines to the upper treelines. These findings seem to challenge the general principle of dendroclimatology that precipitation serves as the controlling factor of radial tree growth at lower elevations while temperature serves as the controlling factor at higher elevations in semi-arid regions. Such conclusions also question the potential of temperature reconstruction using ring-width data in these regions if precipitation remains the dominant factor of tree growth at the upper treelines. In this study, radial growth of Qilian juniper (Sabina przewalskii Kom.) was examined along an elevation gradient between ~3820 and 4230 m in the mountains east of the Qaidam Basin, northeastern Tibetan Plateau, to determine the limiting factors of radial tree growth at different elevations. Rotated principal component analysis revealed two modes of variation patterns. The first mode presents mostly tree ring data from the lower elevation zones (3820–4100 m) and contains strong signals of precipitation variation. The second mode represents the higher elevation zones (approx. 4100–4230 m) and contains strong signals of both temperature and precipitation variations. When signals of precipitation variation are removed from the tree ring data using partial correlation, the growth–temperature relationships become more evident on the upper slope. When correlations between individual tree-ring series and climate variables were examined, we discovered that there were better chances of finding tree ring samples strongly correlated to temperature variables (r = 0.6 or higher) at the elevation zone within ~100 m of the upper treeline, but uncommon at lower elevations. We also found that topographic variables, such as slope gradient and growing-season direct solar radiation may have minor influences on the growth–climate relationships.
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Acknowledgments
The authors thank Dr. Hui Zhang, PhD. student Yang Wang and Feng Chen from the Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, for participation in collecting samples. This study was in part supported by grants from the CAS Strategic Priority Research Program (Grant No. XDA05080201), the China Natural Science Foundation (Grant No. 41471170), and University of San Diego (FRG# 2014–2015 and 2015–2016). The authors thank China Meteorological Administration (CMA) for providing climatic data used in this study, US Geological Survey and NASA for providing the ASTER GDEM v2 data, and two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments and suggestions that helped improve the manuscript substantially.
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Communicated by G. Wieser.
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Yin, ZY., Li, M., Zhang, Y. et al. Growth–climate relationships along an elevation gradient on a southeast-facing mountain slope in the semi-arid eastern Qaidam Basin, northeastern Tibetan Plateau. Trees 30, 1095–1109 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00468-015-1348-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00468-015-1348-3