Climate growth response of Pinus sibirica (Siberian Pine) in the Altai Mountains, northwestern China

摘要

The Altai Mountains in Northwest China has a great potential for dendroclimatological studies. Dendrochronological and climatological response analysis potentials of the northwest China Altai Mountains are hitherto unexplored. In this study, for the first time we have developed chronology statistics and climate response growth analysis of Pinus sibirica using (dplR) and (Treeclim) packages of the R program, with the overall goal of documenting baseline information for future research. The chronology covered a span of up to 202 years in the study site. The results highlighted that the chronology showed highly significant negative correlation to the previous year June and highly positive significant correlation to the late winter March maximum, minimum and average temperature respectively. The results further revealed negative responses for the previous year March in term of Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) value (-0.027) but positive PDSI values (0.035, 0.014, 0.027) for April, May, and June. The results indicate that tree ring widths are not responding positively to the previous year growing season at the current chronologies of 202 years. These findings suggest more extensive research on the climate-growth reconstruction and Response Function Analysis of the trees for longer chronologies up to their natural age of 800 years.