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Forest Response to Environmental Stress at Timberlines: sensitivity of northern, alpine and mediterranean forest limits to climate

Objective


To determine the effects of recent climate change on European timberline forests and to predict the effect of the anticipated near-future global warming at the timberline.


A calibration data-set of climate/environment factors and a wide range of tree growth responses over the last 50 - 100 years will be produced along transects across the timberline in Northern Fennoscandia and on Alpine and Mediterranean mountains. The climate data will be obtained from both exisiting meteorological stations and on-transect monitoring sites. The present vegetation will be mapped in detail and the fertility of timberline
species recorded. The tree growth responses will include annual measurements of pollen and plant macro-fossil deposition, needle density and
needle shed, stomatal density on needles, tree-ring width, density, cell formation and structure and late-wood stable carbon isotope content. Focus will be primarily on Pinus but other tree species will be considered as regionally appropriate.
The multidata-set will be used to model the effect of climate on timberline
forests by elucidating any significant effects of temperature, precipitation
and co2 concentration on tree growth. This model will be tested on past situations of Holocene timberline and climate different from today namely 4000 years ago (Northern transects) and 8000 years ago (Alpine and Mediterranean transects) through determining the same tree growth response factors annually for these time windows.=20
On the basis of this a predictive model of the responses of timberline forests to future changing climate will be built.

Call for proposal

Data not available

Coordinator

University of Oulu
EU contribution
No data
Address

90571 Oulu
Finland

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Total cost
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Participants (12)