Abstract

Climate-growth relationships in forest trees are increasingly the focus of research aimed at understanding and assessing responses to climate change. Many studies have been confined to annual radial growth at breast height as an easy-to-measure dendrological standard variable, although its validity as a proxy for overall annual growth patterns in trees has scarcely been addressed. In this study, we test this hypothesis by exploring additional information on climate-growth relationships as well as analyzing both the radial growth at different stem heights and the height increment. For this purpose, past annual radial growth and shoot elongation were measured in 10 dominant Pinus pinaster Ait. trees in a 130-year-old stand. Radial increments were measured on disks taken from five different trunk heights up to 15 meters. Height increments were obtained by measuring the distance between consecutive branch whorls, which appear as knots after sawing a longitudinal section of the stem. The relationships between climate and both radial growth and height increment were analyzed through Pearson’s correlations and the response to extreme climatic episodes was analyzed using resilience indices. Results revealed that the climatic variables affecting growth were different for height and stem diameter. Additionally, in the case of stem diameter, the climatic variables affecting growth also depended on the height at which the sample was taken. Precipitation prior to bud break, both in the year in which the studied shoot elongation takes place and in the previous year, has a positive effect on height increment. Radial growth in the upper part of the stem was mainly influenced by spring temperatures and precipitation, whereas in the case of basal radial growth it was the autumn and winter temperatures and precipitation of the previous year to growth which had the greatest influence. Similarly, severe droughts cause greater decline in height increment, while the decline in radial growth of the upper part of stem is smaller than that of radial growth at breast height. In conclusion, the analysis of height increment and upper radial growth provides important information to complement the dendroclimatology data for radial growth at breast height, thus improving our understanding of the impact of climate change on tree growth.

  Keywords

---

Dendrochronology, Climate Growth Response, Growth Allocation, Stem Analysis, Climate Sensitivity, Resilience

Authors’ Info

Paper Info

Citation

Rubio-Cuadrado Á, Bravo-Oviedo A, Mutke S, Del Río M (2018). Climate effects on growth differ according to height and diameter along the stem in Pinus pinaster Ait.. iForest 11: 237-242. - doi: 10.3832/ifor2318-011

Academic Editor

Francesco Ripullone

Paper history

Copyright Information

© SISEF - The Italian Society of Silviculture and Forest Ecology 2018

  Open Access

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.

Web Metrics

Citation Metrics

Article Citations

Article citations are based on data periodically collected from the Clarivate Web of Science web site
(last update: Nov 2020)

Total number of cites (since 2018): 6
Average cites per year: 2.00

Articles citing this article

List of the papers citing this article based on CrossRef Cited-by.

References

Related Content

The effect of provenance of historical timber on tree-ring based temperature reconstructions in the Western Central Alps
Riechelmann DF, Hartl C, Esper J
Vol. 13, pp. 351-359 (online: Oct 2020)

Response to climate and influence of ocean-atmosphere phenomena on annual radial increments of Pinus oocarpa Schiede ex Schltdl. & Cham in the Lagunas de Montebello National Park, Chiapas, Mexico
Ponce-Calderón LP, Villanueva-Díaz J, Rodríguez-Trejo DA, Bilbao BA, Álvarez-Gordillo GDC
Vol. 16, pp. 174-181 (online: Jun 2023)

Impact of climate change on radial growth of Siberian spruce and Scots pine in North-western Russia
Lopatin E, Kolström T, Spiecker H
Vol. 1, pp. 13-21 (online: Feb 2008)

Influence of tree density on climate-growth relationships in a Pinus pinaster Ait. forest in the northern mountains of Sardinia (Italy)
Mazza G, Cutini A, Manetti MC
Vol. 8, pp. 456-463 (online: Aug 2015)

Individual-based approach as a useful tool to disentangle the relative importance of tree age, size and inter-tree competition in dendroclimatic studies
Rozas V
Vol. 8, pp. 187-194 (online: Apr 2015)

Growth-climate relations and the enhancement of drought signals in pedunculate oak (Quercus robur L.) tree-ring chronology in Eastern Hungary
Árvai M, Morgós A, Kern Z
Vol. 11, pp. 267-274 (online: Apr 2018)

Role of photosynthesis and stomatal conductance on the long-term rising of intrinsic water use efficiency in dominant trees in three old-growth forests in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Montenegro
Palandrani C, Motta R, Cherubini P, Curović M, Dukić V, Tonon G, Ceccon C, Peressotti A, Alberti G
Vol. 14, pp. 53-60 (online: Feb 2021)

Increasing resistance and resilience of forests, a case study of Great Britain
Leslie A, Wilson E, Park A
Vol. 17, pp. 69-79 (online: Apr 2024)

Species-specific climate response of oaks (Quercus spp.) under identical environmental conditions
Sanders TGM, Pitman R, Broadmeadow MSJ
Vol. 7, pp. 61-69 (online: Apr 2014)

Climatic fluctuations trigger false ring occurrence and radial-growth variation in teak (Tectona grandis L.f.)
Palakit K, Duangsathaporn K, Siripatanadilok S
Vol. 9, pp. 286-293 (online: Apr 2016)