Changing climatic sensitivity and effects of drought frequency on the radial growth of Fagus sylvatica at the xeric frontiers of Central Europe

Garamszegi, Balázs and Kázmér, Miklós and Kolozs, László and Kern, Zoltán (2020) Changing climatic sensitivity and effects of drought frequency on the radial growth of Fagus sylvatica at the xeric frontiers of Central Europe. IDŐJÁRÁS / QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF THE HUNGARIAN METEOROLOGICAL SERVICE, 124 (2). pp. 227-251. ISSN 0324-6329

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Abstract

The influence of climate on the vitality and growth of European beech (Fagus sylvatica L.) has become a focus of forest research over the last decade. Beech locally reaches its continental xeric limit in Hungary within its European distribution area, giving a unique opportunity to study the climatic sensitivity of the species, based on tree-ring analysis. A comparison of four geographically and climatically different sites is presented from Hungary, combining data collected on stand level with systematic forest inventory plots. Tree-ring width chronologies covering the past 90–100 years of the lifetime of mature and middle-aged trees and different climatic variables were used to evaluate the growth-climate relationships and recent growth trends of the selected beech stands by multivariate regression analysis. Strong relationships were found between annual radial growth and (mainly water availability related) meteorological variables of the vegetation season, exceeding previous results from elsewhere in Europe. A clear spatiotemporal variability of the growth sensitivity was also revealed, following a (climatic) gradient from the northern to the southwestern parts of the country. In the northern sites, climatic sensitivity was found to be more fluctuating, while southwestern sites facing more continuous effects of changing climatic conditions seem to show weakening correlation over time. Trends of relative basal area increments and climatic sensitivity of growth over the past decades may be due to unfavorable climatic changes, though extreme and recurrent drought events superimposed on the long-term trends seem to have a decisive impact on growth patterns and associated resilience of beech.

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