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LIMITS OF TREE GROWTH IN |
WHEN DOES TEMPERATURE BECOMES TOO MUCH?
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LIMITS OF TREE GROWTH IN |
Tree growth is driven by a combination of water, temperature and light and climate change directly affect this combination threatening natural and planted forested in the whole world. Major dieback events throughout the world have been associated with increases in temperature which have affected areas of over a 1 million hectares. In the face of such conditions, future practices in forest management must consider a climate that is changing faster than species can adapt to and thus developing strategies to effectively prepare the landscape for future scenarios becomes essential skills for continued resource exploration. In order to develop such strategies it is important to understand the limiting factor for tree growth today so we can model species responses in future conditions.
South America is part of southern continents that haven't been well studied with regards to its responses to climate. Part of the reason involves the difficulty in covering the richness of natural resources and high biodiversity, but other reasons are related to poor resources available for research. However, online databases have provided a important step around this limitation. Thus, taking advantage of the International Tree Ring Data Base, our study aims to use tree ring historical climate information to understand what factors drive tree growth in South America. We analyse over 300 chronologies from over 120 different geographical points trying to uncover patterns in the responses. Our results demonstrates why chronologies differ in their response to climate as well as bring what factors are limiting tree growth. |
Tree ringWe use tree ring information from International Tree-Ring Database (ITRDB) to learn about historical growth of trees
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Climate databaseWe then correlate with climate data from the ClimateSA v1.12 software to see in what conditions the growth is better or worse
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Response FunctionFinally we use a response function analysis the get reliable information of what really matter for the tree
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