Warming-driven increased synchrony of tree growth across the southernmost part of the Asian boreal forests.

Publisher: Elsevier Country of Publication: Netherlands NLM ID: 0330500 Publication Model: Print-Electronic Cited Medium: Internet ISSN: 1879-1026 (Electronic) Linking ISSN: 00489697 NLM ISO Abbreviation: Sci Total Environ Subsets: MEDLINE

Original Publication: Amsterdam, Elsevier.

Climate Change* ; Trees*/growth & development; China ; Taiga ; Forests ; Global Warming ; Temperature ; Ecosystem

Climate change has profoundly affected the synchrony of tree growth at multiple scales, thereby altering the structure and function of forest ecosystems. The Asian boreal forests extend southward to the Greater Khingan Range in northeast China. Given the ecological importance and susceptibility to climate change, the impacts of warming on this marginal forest community have been extensively investigated. Nonetheless, how tree growth synchrony changes across this region remains less understood. Focusing on this knowledge gap, we compiled a contiguously-distributed tree-ring network, containing 18 sampling populations and 475 individual larch trees, to explore the changes in multiple-scale growth synchrony across this region. We found increasing growth synchrony at both the individual and population levels over the past decades. The increasing trend of the regional inter-population growth synchrony was well in line with the increasing temperature and PDSI. Furthermore, 11 of the 18 sampling populations showed significant increases in their intra-population growth synchrony. We further associated the sliding intra-population growth synchrony with local climates. Intra-population growth synchrony of 13 and 11 sampling populations were significantly positively correlated with local temperature, and negatively correlated with local PDSI, respectively, demonstrating the driving role of warming-induced drought on growth synchrony. The linear regression model quantifying this relationship suggested that an increase of 1 °C in annual mean temperature would drive the intra-population growth synchrony to increase by 0.047. As warming trends in the study area are projected to continue over this century, our study warns of the further consequences of the increasing growth synchrony may have on the functioning, resilience, and persistence of forests.
Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
(Copyright © 2024 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Keywords: Asian boreal forests; Boreal larch; Growth synchrony; Impacts of warming; The Greater Khingan Range; Tree-ring

Date Created: 20240529 Date Completed: 20240610 Latest Revision: 20240610

20240611

10.1016/j.scitotenv.2024.173389

38810743