Comparing remotely-sensed and in-situ data on response of forest growth to climate variability and change in European Ru

1. Comparing remotely-sensed and in-situ data on response of forest growth to climate variability and change in European Russia. Malcolm K. Hughes (1), Alexander Olchev (2), and Andy Bunn (3) (1) Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research, University of Arizona, Tucson AZ, USA, (2) Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution, Moscow, Russia, (3) Western Washington University, Bellingham, WA, USA No part of this presentation may be reproduced or distributed

2. Background • Our objective is to place satellite observations of forest growth in European Russia in a longer-term context, so as to better understand the nature and causes of inter-annual to multidecadal variability. • The main questions to be addressed are: • Are the remotely-sensed measures of vegetation growth and tree-ring derived measures of vegetation growth consistent with one another? • Can their similarities and inconsistencies be explained on a quantitative basis? • To what extent do they capture the same or complementary aspects of forest growth?

3. Background • Further questions include: • What is the role of climate variability in causing the individual and common patterns of spatiotemporal variability in the remotely-sensed and tree-ring data? • How typical have the past 30 years been of the previous 100 years? • Have relationships between climate and forest growth changed in recent years, or are they within the range of variability of the last 100 years? • To what extent can the relationships between forest growth and climate as derived from these datasets help constrain expectations of near future change in forest growth?

4. 3 1 2 415 trees sampled from summer 2009, and 391 from 2010, two cores per tree, presently being processed. All sites except Lapland now sampled.

7. For example at location #1….. Back to 1714 N = 30 in 20th Century Back to 1787 N = 25 in 20th Century CBZ Pine mean ring width +/- 1SE

8. CLIMATIC CORRELATIONS Both species show significant correlations with summer temperatures of the year prior to growth. They differ in spruce correlating with January and current August temperature and pine having precipitation correlations of opposing signs in spring of the year of growth. precipitation Significant at 95% temperature

9. RESPONSE FUNCTIONS • A form of orthogonalized regression • Gives a more conservative view of climatic relationship • Analogous to partial regression coefficients • Shows no significant change in climate response in trees in satellite area precipitation temperature

10. EVOLUTIVE RESPONSE FUNCTIONS • Conservative appraisal of climatic relationship • Calculated first for the period 1892 through 1959 and then adding a year and recalculating until 2008 is reached. • No striking change in climate response in these trees in the satellite era.

11. Final words • This is a very preliminary report and most sample analysis will take place this winter, with analysis of the tree-ring data, satellite observations, meteorological data, flux-tower results and simulation modeling to occur in the year commencing Summer 2011

12. Thanks to: • NASA LCLUC program • Field work: Elena Novenko, Chris Baisan, Mark Losleben, Katya Kuznetsova, Logan Berner and others. • Access to sites: colleagues at the Biosphere Reserves. • Lab work: Mark Losleben and Jim Burns. • Remote sensing data analyses: Logan Berner. • Help with presentation: Mark Losleben.