Significant mean and extreme climate sensitivity of Norway spruce and silver fir at mid-elevation mesic sites in the Alps.

ABSTRACT: Climate forcing is the major abiotic driver for forest ecosystem functioning and thus significantly affects the role of forests within the global carbon cycle and related ecosystem services. Annual radial increments of trees are probably the most valuable source of information to link tree growth and climate at long-term time scales, and have been used in a wide variety of investigations worldwide. However, especially in mountainous areas, tree-ring studies have focused on extreme environments where the climate sensitivity is perhaps greatest but are necessarily a biased representation of the forests within a region. We used tree-ring analyses to study two of the most important tree species growing in the Alps: Norway spruce (Picea abies) and silver fir (Abies alba). We developed tree-ring

SUBMITTER: Carrer M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3510186 | biostudies-literature | 2012

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature