Comparison of whole wood and cellulose carbon and oxygen isotope series from Pinus nigra ssp. laricio (Corsica/France)

Stable isotopes in tree rings have widely been used for palaeoclimate reconstructions since tree rings record climatic information at annual resolution. However, various wood components or different parts of an annual tree-ring may differ in their isotopic compositions. Thus, sample preparation and subsequent laboratory analysis are crucial for the isotopic signal retained in the final tree-ring isotope series used for climate reconstruction and must therefore be considered for the interpretation of isotope–climate relationships. This study focuses on wood of Corsican Pine trees (Pinus nigra ssp. laricio) as this tree species allows to reconstruct the long-term climate evolution in the western Mediterranean. In a pilot study, we concentrated on methodological issues of sample preparation techniques in order to evaluate isotope records measured on pooled whole tree-ring cellulose and whole tree-ring bulk wood samples. We analysed 80-year long carbon and oxygen chronologies of Corsican Pine trees growing near the upper tree line on Corsica. Carbon and oxygen isotope records of whole tree-ring bulk wood and whole tree-ring cellulose from a pooled sample of 5 trees were correlated with the climate parameters monthly precipitation, temperature and the self-calibrating Palmer Drought Severity Index (sc-PDSI). Results show that the offsets in carbon and oxygen isotopes of bulk wood and cellulose are not constant over time. Both isotopes correlate with climate parameters from late winter and summer. The carbon and oxygen isotope ratios of cellulose are more sensitive to climatic variables than those of bulk wood. The results of this study imply that extraction of cellulose is a pre-requisite for the reconstruction of high-resolution climate records from stable isotope series of P. nigra ssp. laricio.