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Growth response to climate and drought in Pinus nigra Arn. trees of different crown classes

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An Erratum to this article was published on 10 November 2009

Abstract

Tree-ring chronologies were examined to investigate the influence of climate on radial growth of Pinus nigra in southeastern Spain. We addressed whether drought differentially affected the ring-widths of dominant and suppressed trees and if our results supported the hypothesis that, in a Mediterranean climate, suppressed conifer trees suffer greater growth reductions than dominant trees. Climate–growth relationships were analyzed using response and correlation functions, whereas the effect of drought on trees growth was approached by superposed epoch analysis in 10 dry years. A cool, wet autumn and spring, and/or mild winter enhanced radial growth. Latewood was the most sensitive ring section in both kinds of trees and it was primarily influenced by current year precipitations. Earlywood was mostly influenced by climatic conditions previous to the growing season. In general, May was the most influential month. Pinus nigra was shown to be very drought sensitive tree in the study area. Tree-rings in suppressed trees showed lower growth reductions caused by drought than those of dominant trees. However, dominant trees recovered normal growth faster. Dominant trees showed a more plastic response, and suppression appeared to reduce the effect of climate on tree radial growth. Some possible causes for these effects are discussed. Our results support the essential role of the balance between light and moisture limitations for plant development during droughts and show that it is not appropriate to generalize about the way in which suppression affects climate-growth relationship in conifers.

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Acknowledgments

We gratefully acknowledge Enrique Garriga and Ricardo Ruíz-Peinado for assisting in field data collection, Ulf Büntgen for statistical assistance, and Estelle Gill for the English language revision. Guillermo Gea-Izquierdo provided helpful comments that greatly improved the manuscript. We also thank three anonymous reviewers for valuable suggestions and comments on the manuscript. Instituto Nacional de Investigaciones Agrarias y Alimentarias (INIA) provided a doctoral grant to D. Martin-Benito and funds to maintain the permanent research plot network (Research Project OT03–002). We also thank the Spanish Instituto Nacional de Meteorología (INM) for providing meteorological data.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departamento Sistemas y Recursos Forestales, CIFOR-INIA, Crta. La Coruña km 7.5, 28040, Madrid, Spain

    Darío Martín-Benito, Miren del Río & Isabel Cañellas

  2. Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL, 8903, Birmensdorf, Switzerland

    Paolo Cherubini

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  1. Darío Martín-Benito
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  2. Paolo Cherubini
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Correspondence to Darío Martín-Benito.

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Communicated by T. Grams.

An erratum to this article can be found online at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00468-009-0389-x.

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Martín-Benito, D., Cherubini, P., del Río, M. et al. Growth response to climate and drought in Pinus nigra Arn. trees of different crown classes. Trees 22, 363–373 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00468-007-0191-6

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