Abstract
Stem radial variations of Corsican Black pine (Pinus nigra Arnold subsp. laricio Maire) and Maritime pine (Pinus pinaster Aiton) were monitored to quantify the impact of two meteorologically contrasting consecutive years. On the French island of Corsica, in the western Mediterranean basin, the year 2017 was extremely dry, while 2018 was exceptionally wet. We attached electric band dendrometers to 36 pines along an east–west transect, spanning the central mountain range, and set up automated weather stations at all five sites, ranging from 10 m asl to 1600 m asl. Stem radial variations (SRV) were separated into irreversible growth (GRO) and tree water deficit (TWD) periods. During the drought of 2017, the most severe tree water deficits occurred in the western part of the island, whereas trees at higher elevations were more affected than at lower elevations. A prolonged decrease of SRV, even close to the tree line, suggests bimodal growth and reveals high plasticity of growth patterns in both Corsican pines. Stem radial variations correlated significantly with precipitation and temperature. The positive correlations of GRO with precipitation and the negative correlations of TWD with temperature imply that high evapotranspiration led to the intense period of TWD in 2017. A novel approach was used to further investigate the growth/climate relationship by including synoptic-scale pressure situations. This revealed that an elevation gradient in GRO per weather pattern was only present in the wet year and that even rarely occurring weather patterns can have a substantial impact on tree growth. This novel approach provides a more comprehensive insight into meteorological drivers of tree growth patterns by incorporating different scales of the climatic system.
Highlights
These investigations underline the importance of further analyses, as they demonstrate that tree growth is site- and species-specific and that climatic conditions are of particular importance for growth dynamics
Hereafter we focus on the first three principal components (PCs) since they account for 93.7% of the cumulative explained variance of the whole data set
Site eastern coastal site (EL) receives in total more precipitation than site western coastal site (WL), and the precipitation amount is distributed over more days during the year
Summary
Several studies investigating intra-annual growth of tree rings exist for the Mediterranean region, using either dendrometers [36], wood formation monitoring [37,38,39], or a combination of both methods [40]. These investigations underline the importance of further analyses, as they demonstrate that tree growth is site- and species-specific and that climatic conditions are of particular importance for growth dynamics. We aim (I) to quantify the impact of the 2017 drought in relation to elevation and aspect and conduct a comparison to the “wet” year 2018, and determine which elevations and aspects are most affected by within-growing-season drought periods; and (II) to identify the meteorological causalities for differing tree growth rates during the investigated period
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