Abstract
We present six tree-ring chronologies from Mount Emei and Xinglong Mountain, central China, which were used to study tree growth in the context of local climate variations and to provide insight into the regional response of tree growth to climatic and environmental change. The intra- and inter-site running correlations between tree-ring series may be related to shifts in environmental stress. Persistently declining drought response of tree growth at Mount Emei may be related to the moss-induced “swamping effect”. Diebacks at Mount Emei at ~1974 may have been caused by sharply elevated levels of pollutants from a forest fire in 1972. Tree growth at the two lower sites at Xinglong Mountain shows positive correlations with moisture during a water-year, while a negative drought response is seen at the uppermost site. An increase in drought sensitivity of tree growth is observed under the persistent drying trend in recent decades at the Xinglong Mountain.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Barber VA, Juday GP, Finney BP (2000) Reduced growth of Alaska white spruce in the twentieth century from temperature-induced drought stress. Nature 405:668–672
Briffa KR, Jones PD (1990) Basic chronology statistics and assessment. In: Cook ER, Kairiukstis LA (eds) Methods of dendrochronology: applications in the environmental sciences. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, pp 137–152
Briffa KR, Schweingruber FH, Jones PD, Osborn TJ, Shiyatov SG, Vaganov EA (1998) Reduced sensitivity of recent tree-growth to temperature at high northern latitudes. Nature 391:678–682
Chen C, Liao L (1992) A preliminary research on the dieback of Abies fabri in Emei Mountain. Chin J Appl Ecol 3:1–8
Cook ER, Peters K (1997) Calculating unbiased tree-ring indices for the study of climatic and environmental change. Holocene 7:361–370
D’Arrigo R, Wilson R, Liepert B, Cherubini P (2007) On the ‘divergence problem’ in northern forests: a review of the tree-ring evidence and possible causes. Glob Planet Change. doi:10.1016/j.gloplacha.2007.03.004
Dai AG, Trenberth KE, Qian T (2004) A global dataset of palmer drought severity index for 1870–2002: relationship with soil moisture and effects of surface warming. J Hydrometeorol 5:1117–1130
Di Orio AP, Callas R, Schaefer RJ (2005) Forty-eight year decline and fragmentation of aspen (Populus tremuloides) in the South Warner Mountains of California. Forest Ecol Manag 206:307–313
Fang K, Gou X, Chen F, Yang M, Li J, He M, Zhang Y, Tian Q, Peng J (2009a) Drought variations in the eastern part of Northwest China over the past two centuries: evidence from tree rings. Clim Res 38:129–135
Fang K, Gou X, Levia DF, Li J, Zhang F, Liu X, He M, Zhang Y, Peng J (2009b) Variations of radial growth patterns in trees along three altitudinal transects in north central China. IAWA J 30(4):443–457
Fritts HC (1976) Tree rings and climate. Academic Press, London
Gou X, Chen F, Cook E, Jacoby G, Yang M, Li J (2007) Streamflow variations of the Yellow River over past 593 years in western China reconstructed from tree rings. Water Resour Res 43. doi:10.1029/2006WR 005705
Guan ZT (1983) Flora in Sichuan province (China). Sichuan People’s Press, Chengdu
Holmes RL (1983) Computer-assisted quality control in tree-ring dating and measurement. Tree-Ring Bull 43:69–95
Liu Y, An Z, Ma H, Cai Q, Liu Z, Kutzbach JK, Shi J, Song H, Sun J, Yi L, Tang Y, Wang L (2006) Precipitation variation in the northeastern Tibetan Plateau recorded by the tree rings since 850 AD and its relevance to the Northern Hemisphere temperature. Sci China (Ser D) 49:408–420
New MG, Hulme M, Jones PD (2000) Representing twentieth century space-time climate variability. Part II: Development of a 1901–1996 monthly terrestrial climate field. J Clim 13:2217–2238
Palmer WC (1965) Meteorological drought. Weather bureau research, paper 45. US Department of Commerce, Washington, DC
Shao XM, Huang L, Liu HB, Liang EL, Feng XQ, Wang LL (2005) Reconstruction of precipitation variation from tree rings in recent 1,000 years in Delingha, Qinghai. Sci China (Ser D) 48:939–949
Sheppard PR, Tarasov PE, Graumlich LJ, Heussner KU, Wagner M, Österle LH, Thompson LG (2004) Annual precipitation since 515 BC reconstructed from living and fossil juniper growth of Northeast Qinghai Province, China. Clim Dyn 23:869–881
Vaganov E, Hughes M, Kirdyanov A, Schweingruber F, Silkin P (1999) Influence of snowfall and melt timing on tree growth in subarctic Eurasia. Nature 400:149–151
Wilmking M, D’Arrigo R, Jacoby G, Juday G (2005) Divergent growth responses in circumpolar boreal forests. Geophys Res Lett 32(L15715):23. doi:10.1029/2005GLO23331
Wilson R, Elling W (2004) Temporal instability in tree-growth/climate response in the lower Bavarian forest region: implications for dendro climatic reconstruction. Trees 18:19–28
Zhang Y, Wilmking M, Gou X (2008) Changing relationships between tree growth and climate in Northwest China. Plant Ecol. doi:10.1007/s11258-008-9478-y
Zhu X, Jiang W, Zhu L, Jin Y (1997) Study on present environment situation of the Emei Mountain. Sichuan Environment 16:9–17
Acknowledgments
The authors thank Zhonglin Xia from the Forest Department of the Mount Emei for his kind assistances in the field. The authors are grateful for the helpful comments from the two anonymous reviewers and Dr. Miklos Kazmer. This study was jointly supported by National Science Foundation of China (No. 40971119), the National Basic Research Program of China (973 Program) (No. 2009CB421306), the Innovation Team Project (No. 40721061) and the Chinese 111 Project (No. B06026).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Communicated by R. Matyssek.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Fang, K., Gou, X., Chen, F. et al. Tree growth and time-varying climate response along altitudinal transects in central China. Eur J Forest Res 129, 1181–1189 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10342-010-0408-x
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10342-010-0408-x