Radial growth of Huashan pine (Pinus armandi) on the Huanshan peaks in Shanxi Province in China was sensitively to climate change and mainly limited by water supply in early summer and temperature in spring, but thermal conditions was also a limitation factor at this high altitudes site.In this study, tree ring chronology of Huashan pine and climate recorders of the nearly weather station were used to explore the relationships between radial growth of Huashan pine and daily mean temperature. Correlations between the change process of daily mean temperature over 34 years and the ring width, early wood width, latewood width, minimum density and maximum density was analyzed.
Results/Conclusions
The results showed that the onset time of a certain temperature in spring was significantly impact the radial growth of Huashan pine, the onset time and the growing season length of 3℃ and 8℃ was significantly negative correlated with ring width, but the width of earlywood was sensitively to the onset time of 3 ℃, latewood width was more sensitive to 8℃ in spring. However, temperature higher than 11℃ would cause restricted growth, the most obvious temperature was 11℃; ring width and density were similarly response to temperature changing. That suggested 3℃ was the sensitive temperature of earlywood formation in spring, 8℃ is key to the formation of latewood and daily temperature higher than 11℃ would cause water stress and which was negative to radial growth.
All of the results were indicated that tree ring chronology of Huashan pine contains abundance climate signals, temperature was also one of the main factor restricting growth, and this provided important information for understanding the tree growth response to rising temperature and historical climate reconstruction.