Abstract
Kamchatka’s forests span across the peninsula’s diverse topography and provide a wide range of physiographic and elevational settings that can be used to investigate how forests are responding to climate change and to anticipate future response. Birch (Betula ermanii Cham.) and larch (Larix gmelinii (Rupr.) Kuzen) were sampled at eight new sites and together with previous collections were compared with monthly temperature and precipitation records to identify their climate response. Comparisons show that tree-ring widths in both species are primarily influenced by May through August temperatures of the current growth year, and that there is a general increase in temperature sensitivity with altitude. The ring-width data for each species were also combined into regional chronologies. The resulting composite larch chronology shows a strong resemblance to a Northern Hemisphere (NH) tree-ring based temperature reconstruction with the larch series tracking NH temperatures closely through the past 300 years. The composite birch ring-width series more closely reflects the Pacific regional coastal late summer temperatures. These new data improve our understanding of the response of forests to climate and show the low frequency warming noted in other, more continental records from high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere. Also evident in the ring-width record is that the larch and birch forests continue to track the strong warming of interior Kamchatka.
Highlights
The future of the boreal forests in Siberia and eastern Asia with a changing climate remains uncertain
Besides examining the elevational climate response, we study the low frequency response of the larch series as a record of regional summer temperature and compare it with a Northern Hemisphere tree-ring based temperature reconstruction [20]
Five sites are located in the northeastern region of the peninsula, near Klyuchi, and four birch sites are from the Petropavlovsk area in the southeast (Figure 1)
Summary
The future of the boreal forests in Siberia and eastern Asia with a changing climate remains uncertain. Given that larch (Larix spp.) forests are important and extensive global coniferous forests, and birch (Betula spp.) are significant along the eastern margin of Asia and in the Northern Hemisphere as a whole, we have undertaken a tree-ring investigation of the climatic controls in Kamchatka of past and recent changes in tree growth of these important species. Tree rings can be used to assess northForests of 572017, degrees, past changes in forest productivity and climate, and can be used to assess recent changes in they are susceptible to illegal logging and fire, and are underlain by discontinuous melting forest growth with changing climate conditions.
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