Reconstruction of a 1436‐year soil moisture and vegetation water use history based on tree‐ring widths from Qilian junipers in northeastern Qaidam Basin, northwestern China

Abstract

AbstractTree‐ring widths have been used widely in studies of environmental changes and reconstructions of past climate. Eleven tree‐ring chronologies of approximately 800–1500 years long were developed from Qilian junipers (Sabina przewalskii Kom.) for northeastern Qaidam Basin, along the margin of the Qinghai–Tibetan Plateau. Previous studies have revealed that water usage stress is the most limiting factor for tree growth in the study region. To evaluate the impact of the combined effects of temperature and precipitation changes over time, we performed water balance modelling using 1955–2002 meteorological data. We found that the tree‐ring widths were strongly correlated with variables representing soil moisture conditions obtained from the water balance model. Specifically we considered actual evapotranspiration (AE) to represent the combined effect of water use demand and moisture availability, deficit as the difference between potential evapotranspiration (PE) and AE to represent the severity of water use stress, and relative soil moisture as the measure of moisture availability. For certain individual monthly and seasonal combinations, the tree‐ring chronologies explained up to 80% of the variation in the soil moisture variables in regression analysis, indicating very good potential for reconstruction of regional soil moisture conditions in the past. These soil moisture variables outperformed precipitation and Palmer's drought severity index in most cases. We reconstructed the soil moisture conditions from 566 AD to 2001, which revealed major dry and wet periods and a general trend toward a wetter condition during the most recent 300 years. By comparing with other proxies in the region, we concluded that the moisture conditions reconstructed from tree‐ring widths very well reflected the climate variability at the interannual and interdecadal scales. Copyright © 2007 Royal Meteorological Society