The impact of local climate change on radial picea abies growth: A case study in natural mountain spruce stand and low-lying spruce monoculture

Abstract

Picea abies L. Karst is undeniably one of the most important tree species growing in Slovakia. In addition to natural mountain spruce forests, monocultures planted in lower areas are also quite common. In this article, we analyze the climate–growth response differences between these two types of spruce stands in the context of local climate change consequences. The study area representing natural mountain spruce forests is located under Osobitá Mt. (Tatra Mountains, Slovakia), while the analyzed low-lying planted monoculture is situated near Biely kríž (Malé Karpaty Mountains, Slovakia). Temporal variation of the dendroclimatological relationships was expressed by the running Spearman correlation coefficient during the observed period 1961–2018. The results showed crucial differences in the dendroclimatological relationships between the selected study areas. For the natural mountain spruce stand, consistent, weak, and positive correlations to the temperature variables were typical, with negative relationships to precipitation during the growing season. In this case, the negative impact of a recent temperature rise was limited. In contrast, the monoculture reacted to the temperature variation during the growing season with fluctuations, while in the case of precipitation, almost no dependence was found. Such incoherency may be a consequence of worsened health conditions, as well as insufficient resiliency to climate-driven stress. The importance of this paper is in its wide applicability, mainly in forestry.