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Characterizing Seasonal Radial Growth Dynamics of Balsam Fir in a Cold Environment Using Continuous Dendrometric Data: A Case Study in a 12-Year Soil Warming Experiment

Historical temperature records reveal that the boreal forest has been subjected to a significant lengthening of the thermal growing season since the middle of the last century, and climate models predict that this lengthening will continue in the future. Nevertheless, the potential phenological resp...

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Autores principales: Oogathoo, Shalini, Duchesne, Louis, Houle, Daniel, Kneeshaw, Daniel
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9315762/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35890836
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/s22145155
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author Oogathoo, Shalini
Duchesne, Louis
Houle, Daniel
Kneeshaw, Daniel
author_facet Oogathoo, Shalini
Duchesne, Louis
Houle, Daniel
Kneeshaw, Daniel
author_sort Oogathoo, Shalini
collection PubMed
description Historical temperature records reveal that the boreal forest has been subjected to a significant lengthening of the thermal growing season since the middle of the last century, and climate models predict that this lengthening will continue in the future. Nevertheless, the potential phenological response of trees to changes in growing season length remains relatively undocumented, particularly for evergreen boreal tree species growing in cold environments. Here, we used the recently defined zero growth (ZG) concept to extract and characterize the metrics of seasonal radial growth dynamics for 12 balsam fir trees subjected to a 12-year soil warming experiment using high resolution radius dendrometer measurements. The ZG concept provides an accurate determination of growth seasonality (onset, cessation, duration, growth rates, and total growth) for these slow-growing trees characterized by significant shrinkage in tree diameter due to dehydration in the winter. Our analysis revealed that, on average, growth onset starts at day 152 ± 7 (±1 SE, 31 May–1 June) and ceases at day 244 ± 27 (31 August–1 September), for a growing season duration of about 3 months (93 ± 26 days) over a 12-year period. Growing season duration is mainly determined by growth cessation, while growth onset varies little between years. A large part (80%) of the total growth occurs in the first 50 days of the growing season. Given the dynamics of growth, early growth cessation (shorter growing season) results in a higher average seasonal growth rate, meaning that longer growing seasons are not necessarily associated with greater tree growth. Soil warming induces earlier growth cessation, but increases the mean tree growth rate by 18.1% and the total annual growth by 9.1%, on average, as compared to the control trees. Our results suggest that a higher soil temperature for warmed trees contributes to providing better growth conditions and higher growth rates in the early growing season, when the soil temperature is low and the soil water content is elevated because of snowmelt. Attaining a critical soil temperature earlier, coupled with lower soil water content, may have contributed to the earlier growth cessation and shorter growing season of warmed trees.
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spelling pubmed-93157622022-07-27 Characterizing Seasonal Radial Growth Dynamics of Balsam Fir in a Cold Environment Using Continuous Dendrometric Data: A Case Study in a 12-Year Soil Warming Experiment Oogathoo, Shalini Duchesne, Louis Houle, Daniel Kneeshaw, Daniel Sensors (Basel) Article Historical temperature records reveal that the boreal forest has been subjected to a significant lengthening of the thermal growing season since the middle of the last century, and climate models predict that this lengthening will continue in the future. Nevertheless, the potential phenological response of trees to changes in growing season length remains relatively undocumented, particularly for evergreen boreal tree species growing in cold environments. Here, we used the recently defined zero growth (ZG) concept to extract and characterize the metrics of seasonal radial growth dynamics for 12 balsam fir trees subjected to a 12-year soil warming experiment using high resolution radius dendrometer measurements. The ZG concept provides an accurate determination of growth seasonality (onset, cessation, duration, growth rates, and total growth) for these slow-growing trees characterized by significant shrinkage in tree diameter due to dehydration in the winter. Our analysis revealed that, on average, growth onset starts at day 152 ± 7 (±1 SE, 31 May–1 June) and ceases at day 244 ± 27 (31 August–1 September), for a growing season duration of about 3 months (93 ± 26 days) over a 12-year period. Growing season duration is mainly determined by growth cessation, while growth onset varies little between years. A large part (80%) of the total growth occurs in the first 50 days of the growing season. Given the dynamics of growth, early growth cessation (shorter growing season) results in a higher average seasonal growth rate, meaning that longer growing seasons are not necessarily associated with greater tree growth. Soil warming induces earlier growth cessation, but increases the mean tree growth rate by 18.1% and the total annual growth by 9.1%, on average, as compared to the control trees. Our results suggest that a higher soil temperature for warmed trees contributes to providing better growth conditions and higher growth rates in the early growing season, when the soil temperature is low and the soil water content is elevated because of snowmelt. Attaining a critical soil temperature earlier, coupled with lower soil water content, may have contributed to the earlier growth cessation and shorter growing season of warmed trees. MDPI 2022-07-09 /pmc/articles/PMC9315762/ /pubmed/35890836 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/s22145155 Text en © 2022 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Oogathoo, Shalini
Duchesne, Louis
Houle, Daniel
Kneeshaw, Daniel
Characterizing Seasonal Radial Growth Dynamics of Balsam Fir in a Cold Environment Using Continuous Dendrometric Data: A Case Study in a 12-Year Soil Warming Experiment
title Characterizing Seasonal Radial Growth Dynamics of Balsam Fir in a Cold Environment Using Continuous Dendrometric Data: A Case Study in a 12-Year Soil Warming Experiment
title_full Characterizing Seasonal Radial Growth Dynamics of Balsam Fir in a Cold Environment Using Continuous Dendrometric Data: A Case Study in a 12-Year Soil Warming Experiment
title_fullStr Characterizing Seasonal Radial Growth Dynamics of Balsam Fir in a Cold Environment Using Continuous Dendrometric Data: A Case Study in a 12-Year Soil Warming Experiment
title_full_unstemmed Characterizing Seasonal Radial Growth Dynamics of Balsam Fir in a Cold Environment Using Continuous Dendrometric Data: A Case Study in a 12-Year Soil Warming Experiment
title_short Characterizing Seasonal Radial Growth Dynamics of Balsam Fir in a Cold Environment Using Continuous Dendrometric Data: A Case Study in a 12-Year Soil Warming Experiment
title_sort characterizing seasonal radial growth dynamics of balsam fir in a cold environment using continuous dendrometric data: a case study in a 12-year soil warming experiment
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9315762/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35890836
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/s22145155
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