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Dendroecological Perspectives on Climate Change on the Southern Tibetan Plateau

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Climate Change, Glacier Response, and Vegetation Dynamics in the Himalaya

Abstract

Tree rings are indicators of historic environmental changes and plant response to past and current climate change. Summer temperature reconstructions from maximum latewood density on the southeastern Tibetan plateau (TP) for the past 600 years revealed cool summer temperatures between ca. 1580 and 1790 A.D., corresponding to the “Little Ice Age (LIA).” This period was characterized by several glacier advance periods, with a maximum glacier extent ending around 1740–1780 A.D. and smaller readvance phases during the early nineteenth to late nineteenth century. Stable carbon isotope analyses of tree-ring cellulose indicate species-specific ecophysiological response patterns of trees to environmental conditions related to enhanced atmospheric CO2 levels and drier site conditions which might affect future forest composition. Spatial patterns of altitudinal changes of climate-growth relationships indicate the dominance of different growth-limiting factors in different regions of the TP. In semiarid regions along the western distribution limit of forests, moisture availability during the growing season is most relevant for growth of juniper tree species even in high altitudes. In contrast, warmer temperatures have a stimulating effect on radial growth close to the upper tree limit on the humid eastern TP. These findings are corroborated by first studies of cambial phenology, indicating a stimulating influence of early growing season temperatures on cell formation. In the dry northeastern TP, wet conditions during the main growing season in June are favorable for radial growth. Due to the low number of studies and a long history of human impact on forests, a climate-driven upward shift of the upper tree limit cannot yet clearly be stated. Tree-ring analyses on long-living dwarf shrubs may increase the potential for dendrochronological climate reconstructions beyond the upper limit of tree growth on the TP.

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Acknowledgments

We acknowledge the financial support by the German research foundation (DFG) priority program 1372 through the project “Monsoonal variations and climate change during the late Holocene derived from tree rings and glacier fluctuations” (BR 1895/21-1) and the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) through the project “Climate variability and landscape dynamics in southeast Tibet and the Eastern Himalaya during the Late Holocene: reconstructed from tree rings, soils, and climate modeling” (CLASH) within the joint project Central Asia – Monsoon dynamics and Geo-ecosystems (CAME). We furthermore acknowledge the collaboration and support of Liang Eryuan and Zhu Haifeng (Tibetan Plateau Institute, CAS, Beijing), Lily Wang (Institute of Geographical Sciences, CAS, Beijing), Yang Bao and He Minhui (Cold and Arid Regions Environmental and Engineering Research Institute, CAS, Lanzou), and Fan Zexin (Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, CAS, Kunming).

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  1. Institute of Geography, Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nürnberg, Wetterkreuz 15, 91058, Erlangen, Germany

    Achim Bräuning, Jussi Grießinger, Philipp Hochreuther & Jakob Wernicke

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  1. Achim Bräuning
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Correspondence to Achim Bräuning .

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  1. Department of Geography, Delhi School of, University of Delhi, Delhi, India

    RB Singh

  2. CEN Center for Earth System Research and, University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany

    Udo Schickhoff

  3. Department of Geography, Shaheed Bhagat, University of Delhi, Delhi, India

    Suraj Mal

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Bräuning, A., Grießinger, J., Hochreuther, P., Wernicke, J. (2016). Dendroecological Perspectives on Climate Change on the Southern Tibetan Plateau. In: Singh, R., Schickhoff, U., Mal, S. (eds) Climate Change, Glacier Response, and Vegetation Dynamics in the Himalaya. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28977-9_17

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