495-Year Wood Anatomical Record of Siberian Stone Pine (Pinus sibirica Du Tour) as Climatic Proxy on the Timberline

Abstract

The application of quantitative wood anatomy (QWA) in dendroclimatic analysis offers deep insight into the climatic effect on tree-ring formation, which is crucial in understanding the forests’ response to climate change. However, interrelations between tree-ring traits should be accounted to separate climatic signals recorded during subsequent stages of cell differentiation. The study was conducted in the South Siberian alpine timberline on Pinus sibirica Du Tour, a species considered unpromising in dendroclimatology. Relationships between tree-ring width, cell number N, mean and maximum values of radial diameter D, and cell wall thickness (CWT) were quantified to obtain indexed anatomical chronologies. Exponential functions with saturation D(N) and CWT(N) were proposed, which explained 14–69% and 3–61% of their variability, respectively. Indexation unabated significance of the climatic signals but separated them within a season. Analysis of pointer years and climatic extremes revealed predominantly long-term climatogenic changes of P. sibirica radial growth and QWA and allowed to obtain QWA-based 11-year filtered reconstructions of vegetative season climatic characteristics (R2adj = 0.32–0.66). The revealed prevalence of low-frequency climatic reactions is probably explained by a strategy of slow accumulation and utilization of resources implemented by P. sibirica. It makes this species’ QWA a promising proxy for decadal climatic variations in various intra-seasonal timeframes.