| Abstract: | Dendroclimatic methods were used to investigate the fundamental relationships between the temperature variables and the growth of climatically relic Picea meyeri Rehd. et Wils. on sandy land of Inner Mongolian grasslands in the Xilin River Basin. The annual mean temperature and accumulated temperature (above 5 ℃, 10 ℃) respectively showed no significant correlation with the spruce growth relative to summer mean temperature, which displayed strong coherence with tree growth ( P <0.01). The mean temperature in May showed significantly negative correlation with spruce growth ( P <0.05). Furthermore, it was revealed that the negative influence of May temperature was due to monthly mean maximum temperature ( T max) ( P <0.01) other than monthly mean minimum temperature ( Tmin) values ( P <0.1), which indicated that the use of Tmin and T max separately can allow much more insights on the temperate influence. In addition, extreme maximum temperature in May and June might impose the most detrimental influence on tree growth in semi-arid Inner Mongolian grassland. The analysis of the recorded meteorological data demonstrated that the increases in temperature were synchronous with slight decreases in precipitation in the growing season, which suggested that P. meyeri may reduce growth due to temperature-induced drought. On the other hand, the analysis for decadal periods explored that trees appeared to reduce the sensitivity to the warming, and consequently increased sensitivity to rainfall. This may serve as a baseline for more accurate predictions of the potential impacts of altered climate regimes on tree growth. |
