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Response of radial growth to warming and CO2 enrichment in southern Northeast China: a case of Pinus tabulaeformis

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Abstract

The southern part of northeast China has experienced a marked warming and drying climate. We provide dendrochronological evidence for atmospheric CO2 fertilization and the impacts of warming on Chinese pine (Pinus tabulaeformis) growth. The results of this study show that increased temperature has a negative effect on pine growth during a major part of the growing season and a weakly positive effects on growth during the remaining portion of the year. The monthly temperatures explain ca. 20 % of the total variance in the annual radial growth of Chinese pine from 1901 to 2009. An increase of approximately 3–5 °C is the maximum that Chinese pine can tolerate in this region with an annual rainfall of 500–700 mm. Our results suggest a that there is a proportional response to warming only up to a maximum of 1 °C warming, and indicate the complexitiesof succession in forest ecosystems in terms of adaptation and evolution in local pine populations under a rapid warming condition. In addition, increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations have a positive effect on tree growth. This effect can be detected with conventional dendrochronological methods.

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Acknowledgments

This work was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China Project 41271066, 31100327 and 41071035, the US National Science Foundation Project AGS-PRF: #1137729, and the Tianzhu-Shan Scholars Programme of SAU.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Tree-Ring Laboratory, Forestry College/Research Station of Liaohe-River Plain Forest Ecosystem CFERN, Shenyang Agriculture University, Shenyang, 110866, China

    Zhenju Chen, Xianliang Zhang, Lulu Li & Xueping Bai

  2. Qingyuan Forest CERN, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang, 110164, China

    Zhenju Chen & Xingyuan He

  3. Tree-Ring Laboratory, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University, New York, NY, 10964, USA

    Nicole K. Davi

  4. Department of Environmental Science, William Paterson University, Wayne, NJ, 07040, USA

    Nicole K. Davi

Authors
  1. Zhenju Chen
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  2. Xianliang Zhang
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  3. Xingyuan He
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  4. Nicole K. Davi
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  5. Lulu Li
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  6. Xueping Bai
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Correspondence to Zhenju Chen.

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Chen, Z., Zhang, X., He, X. et al. Response of radial growth to warming and CO2 enrichment in southern Northeast China: a case of Pinus tabulaeformis . Climatic Change 130, 559–571 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-015-1356-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-015-1356-8

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