Climatic Effects on Position and Dynamics of Upper Open Forest Boundary in Altay and Western Sayan in the Last 60 Years

Abstract

The upper treeline ecotone is a global and typically climate-dependent phenomenon. Its elevation is usually coupled with the thermal limitations of tree growth. The air temperature rise connected with global warming is assumed as the main cause of treeline upslope shifts in the last century. It has been found that the treeline elevation also correlates with the distance from the coastline and the aridity or continentality of the climate or the mass elevation effect. However, previous and contemporary publications have not explained how the upper treeline position directly couples with climate parameters. Often, this has been restricted by a lack of climate measurements and spatial data. In our study, we obtained data from 339 regional weather stations for 1964–1974 and interpolated them to Altay and Western Sayan using regional DEMs and a specially developed regression model. Moreover, we semiautomatically identified the elevational position of the upper open forest boundary (OFB) (crown closure > 10%) on the slopes of 30 mountains in Altay and Western Sayan in 1960 and 2020. We took into account the slope aspect and edaphic constraints. The obtained data allowed us to undertake a regression analysis of the dependence of the OFB elevation on climatic parameters. As a result, we found that, in the 1960s, at OFB elevations rising from the outer to the inner parts of the study area to approximately 500–700 m, the summer air temperature and precipitation linearly decreased, but the summer sunshine duration increased. In the multiple regression analysis, including the climatic parameters as independent variables and the OFB elevation as a dependent variable, significant relations were found only for the combination of air temperature and sunshine duration. We assume that the OFB elevation is determined not only by the air temperature but also by the direct solar irradiation level, changing with latitude and cloudiness. We also found that the ratio between the OFB elevation on the northern and southern slopes varied with respect to latitude. The spatial analysis of OFB shifts in 1960–2020 revealed significant differences in its value in the central (80–90 m) and outer parts of the study area (110–130 m). We suppose that the OFB advance over the past 60 years has local specificity associated with the peculiarities of the climatic changes (summer temperature rise, precipitation decrease, and sunshine duration increase) in different parts of Altay and Western Sayan. Our results highlight the need to clearly determine climatic parameters when forecasting woody vegetation reactions to future climate changes.