Our objective was to examine broadly the climate–growth responses of longleaf pine (Pinus palustris Mill.) on the Coastal Plain province of North and South Carolina to temperature, precipitation, and drought severity. We compared the responses between standardized earlywood, latewood, adjusted latewood, and totalwood radial tree growth. We sampled mature longleaf pine growing in open-canopy savanna environments and developed six tree-ring chronologies using standard dendroecological techniques. We used a combination of Pearson correlation, moving interval correlation, and Fisher r–z tests to determine which monthly and seasonal variables were most closely related to radial growth, the temporal stability of the dominant growth/climate relationship, and whether earlywood and latewood growth provide signifcantly diferent climate responses. Our results show that the strongest relationships with climate are with adjusted latewood growth and that rainfall in the later parts of the growing season (i.e., July–September) is the primary control of radial growth. Spatially, we found that growth/climate responses were similar throughout the Coastal Plain region encompassing the six study sites. Temporally, we found that July–September precipitation produced signifcant (p<0.05) relationships with radial growth for extended annual intervals, but there were shorter periods when this relationship was non-signifcant. In general, growth/ climate relationships were stronger for latewoodmore »
This content will become publicly available on January 2, 2024
The Longleaf Tree-Ring Network: Reviewing and expanding the utility of Pinus palustris Mill. Dendrochronological data
The longleaf pine ( Pinus palustris Mill.) and related ecosystem is an icon of the southeastern United States (US). Once covering an estimated 37 million ha from Texas to Florida to Virginia, the near-extirpation of, and subsequent restoration efforts for, the species has been well-documented over the past ca. 100 years. Although longleaf pine is one of the longest-lived tree species in the southeastern US—with documented ages of over 400 years—its use has not been reviewed in the field of dendrochronology. In this paper, we review the utility of longleaf pine tree-ring data within the applications of four primary, topical research areas: climatology and paleoclimate reconstruction, fire history, ecology, and archeology/cultural studies. Further, we highlight knowledge gaps in these topical areas, for which we introduce the Longleaf Tree-Ring Network (LTRN). The overarching purpose of the LTRN is to coalesce partners and data to expand the scientific use of longleaf pine tree-ring data across the southeastern US. As a first example of LTRN analytics, we show that the development of seasonwood chronologies (earlywood width, latewood width, and total width) enhances the utility of longleaf pine tree-ring data, indicating the value of these seasonwood metrics for future studies. We find that at more »
- Authors:
- ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; more »
- Publication Date:
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10389198
- Journal Name:
- Progress in Physical Geography: Earth and Environment
- Page Range or eLocation-ID:
- Article No. 030913332211476
- ISSN:
- 0309-1333
- Publisher:
- SAGE Publications
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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