Abstract
In this study, we investigated the response of trees growing at the cold margins of the boreal forest to climate variation in the 20th century. Working at eight sites at and near alpine and arctic treeline in three regions in Alaska, we compared tree growth (from measured tree ring-widths) to historical climate data to document how growth has responded to climate variation in the 20th century. We found that there was substantial regional variability in response to climate variation. Contrary to our expectations, we found that after 1950 warmer temperatures were associated with decreased tree growth in all but the wettest region, the Alaska Range. Although tree growth increased from 1900–1950 at almost all sites, significant declines in tree growth were common after 1950 in all but the Alaska Range sites. We also found that there was substantial variability in response to climate variation according to distance to treeline. Inverse growth responses to temperature were more common at sites below the forest margin than at sites at the forest margin. Together, these results suggest that inverse responses to temperature are widespread, affecting even the coldest parts of the boreal forest. Even in such close proximity to treeline, warm temperatures after 1950 have been associated with reduced tree growth. Growth declines were most common in the warmer and drier sites, and thus support the hypothesis that drought-stress may accompany increased warming in the boreal forest.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Barber, V., Juday, G. P., and Finney, B.: 2000, ‘Reduced Growth of Alaskan White Spruce in the Twentieth Century from Temperature-Induced Drought Stress’, Nature 405, 668–673.
Black, R. A. and Bliss, L. C.: 1980, ‘Reproductive Ecology of Picea mariana (Mill.) B.S.P. at Tree Line near Inuvik, Northwest Territories, Canada’, Ecol. Monogr. 50, 331–354.
Bonan, G., Pollard, D., and Thompson, S. L.: 1992, ‘Effects of Boreal Forest Vegetation on Global Climate’, Nature 359, 716–718.
Briffa, K. F., Schweingruber, F., Jones, P., Osborn, T., Harris, I., Shiyatov, S., Vaganov, E., and Grudd, H.: 1998a, ‘Trees Tell of Past Climates: But Are They Speaking Less Clearly Today?’ Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc. London B 353, 65–73.
Briffa, K., Schweingruber, F., Jones, P., Osborn, T., Shiyatov, S., and Vaganov, E.: 1998b, ‘Reduced Sensitivity of Recent Tree-Growth to Temperature at High Northern Latitudes’, Nature 391, 678–682.
Casper, B. B. and Jackson, R. B.: 1997, ‘Plant Competition Underground’, Ann. Rev. Ecol. Syst. 28, 545–570.
Chapin, F. S.: 1983, ‘Direct and Indirect Effects of Temperature on Arctic Plants’, Polar Biol. 2, 47–52.
Chapin, F. S., Eugster, W., McFadden, J. P., Lynch, A. H., and Walker, D. A.: 2000, ‘Summer Differences among Arctic Ecosystems in Regional Climate Forcing’, J. Climate 13, 2002–2010.
Chapin, F. S., Shaver, G., Giblin, A., Nadelhoffer, K., and Laundre, J.: 1995, ‘Responses of Arctic Tundra to Experimental and Observed Changes in Climate’, Ecology 76, 694–711.
Chapman, W. L. and Walsh, J. E.: 1993, ‘Recent Variations of Sea Ice and Air Temperature in High Latitudes’, Bull. Amer. Meteorol. Soc. 74, 33–47.
D'Arrigo, R. D. and Jacoby, G. C.: 1993, ‘Secular Trends in High Northern Latitude Temperature Reconstructions Based on Tree Rings’, Clim. Change 25, 163–177.
Dixon, R. K., Brown, S., Houghton, R. A., Solomon, A. M., Trexler, M. C., and Wisniewski, J.: 1994, ‘Carbon Pools and Flux of Global Forest Ecosystems’, Science 263, 185–189.
Fyfe, J. C., Boer, G. J., and Flato, G. M.: 1999, ‘The Arctic and Antarctic Oscillations and their Projected Changes under Global Warming’, Geophys. Res. Lett. 26, 1601–1604.
Garfinkel, H. L. and Brubaker, L. B.: 1980, ‘Modern Climate-Tree Growth Relationships and Climatic Reconstruction in Sub-Arctic Alaska’, Nature 286, 872–874.
Gillett, N. P., Hegerl, G. C., Allen, M., Stott, P. A.: 2000, ‘Implications of Changes in the Northern Hemisphere Circulation for the Detection of Anthropogenic Climate Change’, Geophys. Res. Lett. 27, 993–996.
Griggs, R. F.: 1934, ‘The Edge of the Forest in Alaska and the Reasons for its Position’, Ecology 15, 80–96.
Gulledge, J. and Schimel, J. P.: 2000, ‘Controls on Soil Carbon Dioxide and Methane Fluxes in a Variety of Taiga Forest Stands in Interior Alaska’, Ecosystems 3, 269–282.
Hammond, T. and Yarie, J.: 1996, ‘Spatial Prediction of Climatic State Factor Regions in Alaska’, Ecoscience 3, 490–501.
Holmes, R. L.: 2000, The Dendrochronological Program Library, Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research, The University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ.
Houghton, J., Meira Filho, L., Callander, B., Harris, N., Kattenberg, A., and Maskell, K. (eds.): 1996, Climate Change 1995: The Science of Climate Change, Cambridge University Press.
Jacoby, G. C., Cook, E. R., and Ulan, L. D.: 1985, ‘Reconstructed Summer Degree Days in Central Alaska and Northwestern Canada since 1524’, Quat. Res. 23, 18–26.
Jacoby, G. and D'Arrigo, R.: 1995, ‘Tree RingWidth and Density Evidence of Climatic and Potential Forest Change in Alaska’, Global Biogeochem. Cycles 9, 227–234.
Jacoby, G. C. and D'Arrigo, R.: 1997, ‘Tree Rings, Carbon Dioxide, and Climatic Change’, Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. 94, 8350–8353.
Jacoby, G. C., D'Arrigo, R., and Davaajamts, T.: 1996, ‘Mongolian Tree Rings and 20th-Century Warming’, Science 273, 771–773.
Jacoby, G., Lovelius, N., Shumilov, O., Raspopov, O., Kabainov, J., and Frank, D.: 2000: ‘Long-Term Temperature Trends and Tree Growth in the Taymir Region of Northern Siberia’, Quat. Res. 53, 312–318.
Jonasson, S., Michelsen, A., Schmidt, I., and Nielsen, E. V.: 1999, ‘Responses in Microbes and Plants to Changed Temperature, Nutrient, and Light Regimes in the Arctic’, Ecology 80, 1828–1843.
Kattsov, V. M. and Walsh, J. E.: 2000, ‘Twentieth Century Trends of Arctic Precipitation from Observational Data and a Climate Model Simulation’, J. Climate 13, 1362–1370.
Keeling, C., Chin, J., and Whorf, T.: 1996, ‘Increased Activity of Northern Vegetation Inferred from Atmospheric CO2 Measurements’, Nature 382, 146–149.
Kullman, L.: 1987, ‘Long-Term Dynamics of High-Altitude Populations of Pinus sylvestris in the Swedish Scandes’, J. Biogeogr. 14, 1–8.
Kullman, L.: 1995, ‘Holocene Tree-Limit and Climate History from the Scandes Mountains, Sweden’, Ecology 76, 2490–2502.
Lloyd, A. H.: 1997, ‘Response of Treeline Populations of Foxtail Pine (Pinus balfouriana) to Climate Variation over the last 1,000 Years’, Can. J. Forest Res. 27, 936–942.
Lloyd, A. H. and Graumlich, L. J.: 1997, ‘A 3,500 Year Record of Changes in the Structure and Distribution of Forests at Treeline in the Sierra Nevada, California, U.S.A’, Ecology 78, 1199–1210.
Lynch, A. and Wu, W.: 2000, ‘iImpacts of Fire and Warming on Ecosystem Uptake in the Boreal Forest’, J. Climate 13, 2334–2338.
MacDonald, G. M., Edwards, T. W. D., Moser, K. A., Pienitz, R., and Smol, J. P.: 1993, ‘Rapid Response of Treeline Vegetation and Lakes to Past Climate Warming’, Nature 361, 243–246.
MacDonald, G. M., Velichko, A. A., Kremenetski, C. V., Borisova, O. K., Goleva, A. A., Andreev, A. A., Cwynar, L. C., Riding, R. T., Forman, S. L., Edwards, T.W. D., Aravena, R., Hammarlund, D., Szeicz, J. M., and Gattaulin, V. N.: 2000, ‘Holocene Treeline History and Climate Change across Northern Eurasia’, Quat. Res. 53, 302–311.
Mann, M. E., Bradley, R. S., and Hughes, M. K.: 1998, ‘Global-Scale Temperature Patterns and Climate Forcing over the Past Six Centuries’, Nature 392, 779–787.
Myneni, R., Keeling, C., Tucker, C., Asrar, G., and Nemani, R.: 1997, ‘Increased Plant Growth in the Northern High Latitudes from 1981 to 1991’, Nature 386, 698–702.
Nadelhoffer, K. J., Giblin, A. E., Shaver, G. R., and Linkins, A. E.: 1992, ‘Microbial Processes and Plant Nutrient Availability in Arctic Soils’, in Chapin, F. S., Jefferies, R. L., Reynolds, J. F., Shaver, G. R., and Svoboda, J. (eds.), Arctic Ecosystems in a Changing Climate: An Ecophysiological Perspective, Academic Press, San Diego, pp. 281–300.
Oechel, W., Hastings, S., Vourlitis, G., Jenkins, M., Riechers, G., and Grulke, N.: 1993, ‘Recent Change of Arctic Tundra Ecosystems from Net Carbon Dioxide Sink to a Source’, Nature 361, 520–523.
Osterkamp, T. E. and Romanovsky, V. E.: 1999, ‘Evidence for Warming and Thawing of Discontinuous Permafrost in Alaska’, Permafrost Periglacial Processes 10, 17–37.
Overpeck, J., Hughen, K., Hardy, D., Bradley, R., Case, R., Douglas, M., Finney, B., Gajewski, K., Jacoby, G., Jennings, A., Lamoureux, S., Lasca, A., McDonald, G., Moore, J., Retelle,M., Smith, S., Wolfe, A., and Zielinski, G.: 1997, ‘Arctic Environmental Change of the Last Four Centuries’, Science 278, 1251–1256.
Post, W.M., Emanuel, W. R., Zinke, P. J., Stangenberger, A. G.: 1982, ‘Soil Carbon Pools and World Life Zones’, Nature 298, 156–159.
Serreze, M. C., Walsh, J., Chapin, F. S., Osterkamp, T., Dyurgerov, M., Romanovsky, V., Oechel, W., Morison, J., Zhang, T., and Barry, R.: 2000, ‘Observational Evidence of Recent Change in the Northern High-Latitude Environment’, Clim. Change 46, 159–207.
Shindell, D. T., Miller, R. L., Schmidt, G. A., and Pandolfo, L.: 1999, ‘Simulation of Recent Northern Winter Climate Trends by Greenhouse-Gas Forcing’, Nature 399, 452–455.
Silapaswan, C.: 2000, Land Cover Change on the Seward Peninsula: The Use of Remote Sensing to Evaluate the Potential Influences of Climate Change on Historical Vegetation Dynamics, M.S. Thesis, University of Alaska, Fairbanks, Alaska.
Stokes, M. A. and Smiley, T. L.: 1968, An Introduction to Tree-Ring Dating, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, Illinois.
Stone, R. S.: 1997, ‘Variations in Western Arctic Temperatures in Response to Cloud Radiative and Synoptic-Scale Influences’, J. Geophys. Res. 102, 21769–21776.
Suarez, F., Binkley, D., Kaye, M. W., and Stottlemyer, R.: 1999, ‘Expansion of Forest Stands into Tundra in the Noatak National Preserve, Northwest Alaska’, Ecoscience 6, 465–470.
Szeicz, J. M. and MacDonald, G. M.: 1994, ‘Age-Dependent Tree-Ring Growth Responses of Subarctic White Spruce to Climate’, Can. J. Forest Res. 24, 120–132.
Thompson, D. W. J. and Wallace, J. M.: 1998, ‘The Arctic Oscillation Signature in the Wintertime Geopotential Height and Temperature Fields’, Geophys. Res. Lett. 25, 1297–1300.
Thompson, D. W. J., Wallace, J. M., and Hegerl, G. C.: 2000, ‘Annular Modes in the Extratropical Circulation. Part II: Trends’, J. Climate 13, 1018–1036.
Tranquillini, W.: 1979, The Physiological Ecology of the Alpine Timberline, Springer-Verlag, New York.
Weiner, J.: 1990, ‘Asymmetric Competition in Plant Populations’, Trends Ecol. Evol. 5, 360–364.
Wadhams, P.: 1995, ‘Arctic Sea Ice Extent and Thickness’, Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc. London A 352, 301–319.
Wardle, P.: 1981, ‘Is the Alpine Timberline Set by Physiological Tolerance, Reproductive Capacity, or Biological Interactions?’ Proceedings of the Ecological Society of Australia 11, 53–66.
White, A., Cannell, G., and Friend, A.: 2000, ‘The High-Latitude Terrestrial Carbon Sink: A Model Analysis’, Global Change Biol. 6, 227–245. (Received 18 January 2001; in revised form 12 July 2001)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Lloyd, A.H., Fastie, C.L. Spatial and Temporal Variability in the Growth and Climate Response of Treeline Trees in Alaska. Climatic Change 52, 481–509 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1014278819094
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1014278819094