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THE IMPACT OF EXTREME CLIMATE EVENTS ON THE SCOTS PINE RADIAL GROWTH FROM ROMANIA

Cristian Gheorghe Sidor, Ionel Popa, Radu Vlad

Abstract

At European level it has been underlined the fact that the influence of climate changes on the productivity of the Scots pine will have a significant negative impact, which will lead in turn to important economic losses. According to the IUCN classification, in some vegetation areas from Romania, the Scots pine presents a high vulnerability to climate changes. Taking into account that the analysis of tree rings offers objective information on the way trees react to climate variation at spatial and temporal level, the goal of the study is to highlight the effects of unusually warm periods and droughts on Scots pine basal area increment from Romania forest fund. To achieve that we developed and used a Scots pine dendrochronological network consists of thirty-four tree-ring chronologies. The sites are located in mixed and pure Scots pine forest stands, evenly distributed latitudinal, longitudinal and altitudinal on the Romanian territory. The chronologies were developed according to dendrochronological classical procedures. The statistic method used to determinate the characteristic years was represented by the statistical analysis of normalized values in movable window. Our results highlighted that the common pointer years identified in all studied Scots pine stands, regardless of the spatial location, composition or health of component trees, are the years 2000, 2003 and 2012 as negative pointer years and 2014 as positive pointer years. The pure Scots pine stands located at lower elevations in Romania are most affected by the extreme climatic events. In the context of current climate change with a projected increase in intensity and frequency of extreme climate events, the understanding the effects of extreme climate events impact on the growth of the Scots pine stands from Romania represents an imperative necessity.

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DOI resolver: doi.org/10.5593/sgem2017/32/s14.126

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