RT Journal Article
T1 Disentangling the relative role of climate change on tree growth in an extreme Mediterranean environment
A1 Madrigal González, Jaime
A1 Andivia Muñoz, Enrique
A1 Zavala, Miguel A.
A1 Stoffel, Markus
A1 Calatayud, Joaquín
A1 Sánchez Salguero, Raúl
A1 Ballesteros Cánovas, Juan
AB Climate change can impair ecosystem functions and services in extensive dry forests worldwide. However, attribution of climate change impacts on tree growth and forest productivity is challenging due to multiple inter-annual patterns of climatic variability associated with atmospheric and oceanic circulations. Moreover, growth responses to rising atmospheric CO2, namely carbon fertilization, as well as size ontogenetic changes can obscure the climate change signature as well. Here we apply Structural Equation Models (SEM) to investigate the relative role of climate change on tree growth in an extreme Mediterranean environment (i.e., extreme in terms of the combination of sandy-unconsolidated soils and climatic aridity). Specifically, we analyzed potential direct and indirect pathways by which different sources of climatic variability (i.e. warming and precipitation trends, the North Atlantic Oscillation, [NAO]; the Mediterranean Oscillation, [MOI]; the Atlantic Mediterranean Oscillation, [AMO]) affect aridity through their control on local climate (in terms of mean annual temperature and total annual precipitation), and subsequently tree productivity, in terms of basal area increments (BAI). Our results support the predominant role of Diameter at Breast Height (DHB) as the main growth driver. In terms of climate, NAO and AMO are the most important drivers of tree growth through their control of aridity (via effects of precipitation and temperature, respectively). Furthermore and contrary to current expectations, our findings also support a net positive role of climate warming on growth over the last 50 years and suggest that impacts of climate warming should be evaluated considering multi-annual and multi-decadal periods of local climate defined by atmospheric and oceanic circulation in the North Atlantic.
PB Elsevier
SN 0048-9697
YR 2018
FD 2018-11
LK https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/128490
UL https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/128490
LA eng
NO Madrigal-González, J., Andivia, E., Zavala, M. A., Stoffel, M., Calatayud, J., Sánchez-Salguero, R., & Ballesteros-Cánovas, J. (2018). Disentangling the relative role of climate change on tree growth in an extreme Mediterranean environment. Science of The Total Environment, 642, 619-628. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2018.06.064
NO AcknowledgementsThis study has been funded by the Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competition of Spain (MINECO grants FUNDIVER, CGL2015-69186-C2-2-R; P.I. MAZ). J.M.G. was funded by a postdoctoral fellowship at the Universidad de Alcalá in 2016–2017 and more recently as Scientific Collaborator at the University of Geneva. J.A.B.C. and M.S. acknowledge financial support from the Institute for Environmental Sciences, University of Geneva. E.A. was supported by the post-doctoral grant ‘Ayudas para contratos para la formación postdoctoral’ (FPDI-2013-15573) from the Ministry of Economy of the Spanish Government. R.S.-S. is supported by Postdoctoral Grant IJCI-2015-25845 (Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional funds) and CoMo-ReAdapt project (CGL2013-48843-C2-1-R) (Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness).
NO European Commission
NO Ministerio de Economía Industria y Competitividad (España)
NO Universidad de Alcalá
NO Université de Genève
DS Docta Complutense
RD 1 ene 2026