Sfgate precipitation totals
The final composite oak record covers the period from AD 967- 2013, reflects a distinct hydroclimatic signal from late spring to early summer, and is highly correlated with other oak chronologies from surrounding countries.
#SFGATE PRECIPITATION TOTALS SERIES#
The nation-wide oak network includes 276 samples from historical buildings and 1028 modern series from material that was randomly collected at sawmills and wood submission sites across Slovakia.
In this study, we gather all available oak ring width data from Slovakia, establish a new composite chronology and assess its climate sensitivity. The changes in the tree-growth pattern and climatic response of the chronologies of the studied sites in the NW and NE regions were linked to the local climates induced by the Carpathian Mountains.Īlthough Slovakia is largely forested and rich in historical buildings, it is one of the few European countries without a millennium-long tree-ring chronology. The higher occurrence of extreme years during the 20th century, particularly in the NE region, was in accordance with the rise of precipitation variability in the current growing season. Oak trees from the NW and NE regions have adapted to different local climatic conditions and only respond uniformly to severe climate events (e.g., the 1904 drought).
The spatial variability of the correlation coefficients indicates a decreasing trend in correlation intensity with precipitation from NW to NE, particularly during the current growing season (March–July). For the NE region, the temperature in January (T1) and March (T3) and precipitation in May (P5) were revealed to be the major limiting climatic factors. We found that precipitation in April (P4) and June (P6) were the primary climate factors that affected tree growth in the NW region. Even with differences generated by interspecific features, habitats and climatic regimes, a common macroclimatic marker for the NW and NE sites was established by comparing two groups of chronologies separated by the Carpathian chain. We establish sixteen oak (Quercus robur L.) and sessile oak (Quercus petraea (Matt.) Liebl.) site chronologies along a longitudinal gradient (from 22.47 to 26.58 E) in Northern Romania in an attempt to elucidate the impact of climate on oak growth. Recent studies reveal the importance of constructing a dense spatial network of oak tree-ring chronologies in this area, which may be the key to linking the North Central European and East Mediterranean tree records. Tree-ring information and climate response data were applied to investigate the potential of the Carpathian Mountains to influence tree-growth patterns.