Analyzing asymmetries in the response of European beech to precipitation anomalies in various stand and site conditions using decadal diameter censuses

Trifković, Vasilije (author), Bončina, Andrej (author), Ficko, Andrej (author)

In temperate forests, precipitation-productivity relationships have usually been considered linear and symmetric, i.e. under conditions of nominal precipitation variability, trees are able to compensate for reduced growth during dry extremes with increased growth during wet extremes. However, under severely dry/wet conditions tree responses may be nonlinear and asymmetrical. Forest inventory data and standardized drought indexes such as the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) can be used to test for asymmetries in the relationship between aboveground net primary production and precipitation. Based on forest inventory data from Slovenia (51,734 plots, 365,885 individual tree measurements in the period 1992-2013), we estimated the effect of precipitation anomalies on the diameter increment of European beech in various climatic, site and stand conditions. Beech responds asymmetrically to precipitation anomalies even under moderately variable precipitation. An individual tree growth model with 3 tree, 5 stand, 6 site and 4 climate variables explaining 32.6% of the total variance suggests that growth reductions in extremely dry periods are 3.0 times greater than growth increases in extremely wet periods. A comparison of 108 natural cubic spline tree diameter models shows that giving more weight to more extreme deviations from average summer precipitation explains significantly more variance compared to using the average SPI in the summers between the two censuses. We conclude that negative asymmetry can be detected on a temporal scale of a decade with much coarser data than tree-ring chronologies. However, even under |SPI| > 1.5 and a negative trend in the SPI on 60% of the plots at an average rate of -0.2/year, precipitation anomalies contributed < 1% to the diameter increment compared to stand (57%) and site (4%) factors. At the same magnitude of climate anomalies and the same stand density and levels of competition, beech is expected to grow better in structurally and compositionally diverse stands.

• Language: English
• Keywords: climate extremes, standardized precipitation index, Fagus sylvatica, drought, forest inventory, individual-tree diameter growth model
• Work type: Article
• Typology: 1.01 - Original Scientific Article
• Organization: BF - Biotechnical Faculty
• Publication status: Published
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Year: 2022
• Number of pages: 15 str.
• Numbering: Vol. 327, art. 109195
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-142410
• UDC: 63*52:630*11:630*18
• ISSN on article: 0168-1923
• DOI: 10.1016/j.agrformet.2022.109195
• COBISS.SI-ID: 128324355
• Publication date in RUL: 07.11.2022

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: Agricultural and forest meteorology
• Shortened title: Agric. for. meteorol.
• Publisher: Elsevier
• ISSN: 0168-1923
• COBISS.SI-ID: 5051143

Licences

• License: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
• Description: The most restrictive Creative Commons license. This only allows people to download and share the work for no commercial gain and for no other purposes.

Secondary language

• Language: Slovenian
• Keywords: podnebni ekstremi, standardizirani padavinski indeks, Fagus sylvatica, suša, gozdna inventura, model rasti premera posameznega drevesa, bukev