Radial growth projections for spruce on Solovetskiye Islands, the White Sea, for the 21st century

Abstract

Climate change projected for the 21st century is expected to affect different forest ecosystems with corresponding ecological, economic, and social impacts. Modeling is extensively used to estimate the impacts of climate change on tree species distributions, but only several studies produced tree growth projections based on climate change scenarios. However, those studies have been based on multiple regression models without considering the basic principles of dendroclimatology - principle of limiting factors and uniformitarian principle. Here we describe the methodology for tree growth projections that takes advantage of the process-based forward model of tree growth, VS-Lite, calibrated and independently validated on tree-ring data and driven by climate projections. We further use this methodology for spruce growth projections on Solovetskiye islands according to two extreme greenhouse gases emissions scenarios. Even according to the conservative one, which is peak-and-decayscenario, tree growth is projected to be significantly higher throughout the 21st century, than in the 20th century. These results are crucial for the strategies of Arctic region development in the near and remote future.