Climate signal shift under the influence of prevailing climate warming – Evidence from Quercus liaotungensis on Dongling Mountain, Beijing, China

Abstract

Increasing climate warming is inducing drought stress and resulting in forest growth decline in many places around the world. The recent climate of northern China has shown trends of both warming and drying. In this study, we obtained tree ring width chronology of Quercus liaotungensis Koidz. from Dongling Mountain, Beijing, China. We divided the temperature series of the study area into cooling (1940–1969) and warming intervals (1970–2016). The climate–tree growth response analysis showed that temperature exerted a limiting impact on the annual radial growth of Q. liaotungensis during the cooling period, whereas the influence of temperature was lower during the warming period. The moving correlation analysis showed that the influence of summer temperature decreased with the warming climate since the 1970s, and that the influence of winter and spring temperatures decreased since the 2000s. The correlation values between the chronology and precipitation decreased during the cooling period, whereas spring and early summer precipitation correlations began to increase in the 1970s and reached significance (p < 0.05) in the 1990s. Our results show that the positive influence of temperature on radial growth of Q. liaotungensis in the study area has weakened, whereas precipitation has become the dominant regulator with climate warming. These findings suggest that forest growth on Dongling Mountain will decline if climate warming continues in the future.