Climate Signals in Earlywood, Latewood and Tree-Ring Width Chronologies of Sessile Oak (Quercus petraea (Matt.) Liebl.) from Majdanpek, North–Eastern Serbia

Abstract

In this article, the dependence of the sessile oak (Quercus petraea (Matt.) Liebl.) radial growth (tree-ring, earlywood, and latewood widths) on climate (the mean monthly temperature and precipitation totals) was studied in the Majdanpek area, north-eastern Serbia. The growth response of the oak trees to the prevailing climate conditions was dendroecologically investigated, by applying the correlation and response function, as well as by pointer years analysis. The site chronology covered 159 years (1855-2013). We found that latewood and total tree-ring width contain the imprinted positive response to the amount of precipitation in summer months (June and July) of the current growing season. The earlywood width showed no direct dependence on climate data, but it was significantly affected by the previous-year latewood width. Moreover, 40 % of the variation in the latewood width is explained by the earlywood variation in the same season. The temperature was not found to have any significant effect on the growth of oak at the study site. The use of pointer years, determined by applying several calculation procedures, has highlighted previous results, indicating that the precipitation in summer months was the deciding climate factor leading to the occurrence of the years with exceptionally wide or narrow tree-rings and latewood. To enhance our understanding of the response of the sessile oak growth at south-oriented sites with a shallow soil profile to precipitation and temperature variations, and expand the current database and knowledge, future studies should be undertaken.