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Harvard Forest Symposium Abstract 2018

  • Title: The impact of climate warming on larch growth during growing season in Asian continent
  • Primary Author: Wenqing Li (Not Specified)
  • Additional Authors: Neil Pederson (Harvard Forest)
  • Abstract:

    The rapid warming climate for decades are profoundly influencing tree growth in almost all main forests over the world, which was proved and demonstrated by many researchers in recent years. The warming-induced influences applied to trees are very diverse, even totally opposite, in different forests because of the diversity of species, climatic and topographic conditions. Asian continent, notably at the mid-high latitudes, is experiencing more substantial climate change than global average. The conifer forest ecosystems here are exposed to a large magnitude of warming.
    This study focuses on two species of larch, Larix gmelinii and Larix sibirica, which are the main species of central and eastern Asia forests. Both of these two species have broad latitudinal and longitudinal distribution, which signifies the huge variability of temperature and precipitation within distributions. And distribution area of these two larch species experienced significant and rapid climate warming in the past 60 years with a higher warming rate of 1.84 ℃/50yrs than global average of 1.41 ℃/50yrs (from CRU data).
    We will use a tree-ring network containing data sets downloaded from International Tree-Ring Data Bank in Russia and Mongolia and samples collected from Northeastern China. This network almost cover all the distribution area of these two larch species. We will divide all these sites into two groups, low-temperature limit sites and moisture limit sites, according to the response of tree-ring chronology to climate factors. Mean annual temperature and total annual precipitation are used to locate each sampling site in climate dimension, just like longitude and latitude are used for locating in geographical dimension. According to the climate location and limit factor of each site, we can model a formula to describe the relationship between the climate conditions and limit factor. Combined with forecasting climate data, this model can be used to forecast the dynamic of low-temperature limit area and moisture limit area of these two species.

  • Research Category: Regional Studies
    Physiological Ecology, Population Dynamics, and Species Interactions

  • Figures:
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