HR: 0800h
AN: PP51C-0661    [Abstracts]
TI: Carbon Isotopes and the Diverging Growth Response of Treeline Trees to Changing Climate in Alaska
AU: * Barber, V A
EM: ffvab@uaf.edu
AF: University of Alaska Fairbanks, Forestry Sciences-SNRAS Box 7200, Fairbanks, AK 99775-7200, United States
AU: Wilmking, M
AF: Institute of Botany and Landscape Ecology, Greifswald University, Greifswald, GER DEU, Germany
AU: Juday, G P
EM: ffgpj@uaf.edu
AF: University of Alaska Fairbanks, Forestry Sciences-SNRAS Box 7200, Fairbanks, AK 99775-7200, United States
AB: One of the underlying assumptions in dendroclimatology is that trees respond to climate today the same way they have responded in the past (uniformitarian principle). Recent studies at northern high latitudes treeline show this assumption may no longer be valid or may be flawed, as tree ring width based temperature reconstructions underestimate recent warming. This "divergence effect" might be due to false assumptions about 1) climate data (e.g. which climate parameter can be modeled most effectively), 2) tree ring data (e.g. shift in climate sensitivity of tree growth) or 3) a truly new and unprecedented phenomenon (e.g. rapid climate warming exceeding the adaptive capacity of trees). A recent survey of treeline trees in a longitudinal transect across the Alaska and Brooks Ranges in central and northern Alaska (maritime conditions in the west to more arid conditions in the east), has identified 3 responses of tree ring width to warming temperatures at discrete sites; positive (increased growth), negative (decreased growth) and no significant response. We hypothesize that the trees with decreased growth have shifted from temperature to moisture sensitivity as temperatures have increased without a concurrent increase in precipitation or change in snowpack. But there has been no definitive study confirming this. Contrasting this, white spruce growth on productive sites at low elevation sites in central Alaska is best modeled by mean May through August temperature. On such sites there is no threshold change in the prediction efficiency of radial growth across the range of temperatures (residuals are scale-independent) in the 104-yr Fairbanks record. This suggests that low elevation trees consistently have been limited by temperature-induced moisture stress, whereas treeline trees may have been high-temperature limited irregularly in the past, and are now increasingly so in recent decades. For this study, tree cores were collected from 12 white spruce (Picea glauca) trees in the Alaska Range at a site which contains all three responder types. Ring width was measured to confirm to which responder type each tree belongs. Carbon-13 isotopic content of the annual wood of the rings of these 3 response types (for the past 100 years) is being measured to determine if drought stress can explain the differences. Results are still in the preliminary stage but show promise. The premise is that stomatal conductance is reduced under low moisture conditions as leaf pores shut down to conserve water, resulting in a more limited pool of intercellular carbon dioxide for photosynthesis. The hypothesis is that the resulting photosynthate should therefore be heavier as less discrimination of heavier carbon-13 occurs, resulting in a higher ratio of 13C/12C (del13C) incorporated into the wood. While the stomates are open, the energetically more efficient carbon-12 is preferentially incorporated and this ratio is lower. We hope to begin to identify the processes controlling treeline growth, as no intra-site differences (soil moisture and temperature, depth of the A horizon, tree density, slope, aspect, elevation) were documented on any scale which could explain the 3 different growth responses. Isotopes could provide some of the answers.
DE: 1637 Regional climate change
SC: Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology [PP]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting