Shifting Precipitation Patterns Drive Growth Variability and Drought Resilience of European Atlas Cedar Plantations

International audience Tree plantations have been proposed as suitable carbon sinks to mitigate climate change. Drought may reduce their carbon uptake, increasing their vulnerability to stress and affecting their growth recovery and resilience. We investigated the recent growth rates and responses t...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Forests
Main Authors: Camarero, Jesús, Gazol, Antonio, Colangelo, Michele, Linares, Juan, Navarro-Cerrillo, Rafael, Rubio-Cuadrado, Álvaro, Silla, Fernando, Dumas, Pierre-Jean, Courbet, François
Other Authors: Instituto Aragonés de Ciencias de la Salud Zaragoza (IACS), Università degli studi della Basilicata Potenza (UNIBAS), University Pablo de Olavide, Universidad de Córdoba = University of Córdoba Córdoba, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM), Universidad de Salamanca, Ecologie des Forêts Méditerranéennes (URFM), Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement (INRAE), Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness: FORMAL RTI2018-096884-B-C31SilvAdapt RED2018 102719 T project
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: HAL CCSD 2021
Subjects:
Cedrus atlantica
dendroecology
drought
growth resilience
plantations
[SDE]Environmental Sciences
North Atlantic
North Atlantic oscillation
Online Access:https://hal.inrae.fr/hal-03664075
https://doi.org/10.3390/f12121751
Description
Summary:International audience Tree plantations have been proposed as suitable carbon sinks to mitigate climate change. Drought may reduce their carbon uptake, increasing their vulnerability to stress and affecting their growth recovery and resilience. We investigated the recent growth rates and responses to the climate and drought in eight Atlas cedar (Cedrus atlantica) plantations located along a wide climate gradient from wetter sites in south-eastern France and north Spain to dry sites in south-eastern Spain. The cedar growth increased in response to the elevated precipitation from the prior winter to the current summer, but the influence of winter precipitation on growth gained importance in the driest sites. The growth responsiveness to climate and drought peaked in those dry sites, but the growth resilience did not show a similar gradient. The Atlas cedar growth was driven by the total precipitation during the hydrological year and this association strengthened from the 1980s onwards, a pattern related to the winter North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). High winter NAO indices and drier conditions were associated with lower growth. At the individual level, growth resilience was related to tree age, while growth recovery and year-to-year growth variability covaried. Plantations’ resilience to drought depends on both climate and tree-level features.

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