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AOBPreview originally published online on June 25, 2009
Annals of Botany 2009 104(4):665-670; doi:10.1093/aob/mcp158
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© The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Annals of Botany Company. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Dendrochronological potential of the alpine shrub Rhododendron nivale on the south-eastern Tibetan Plateau

Eryuan Liang1,* and Dieter Eckstein2

1 Key Laboratory of Tibetan Environment Changes and Land Surface Processes, Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, PO Box 2871, Beijing 100085, China
2 Department of Wood Science, University of Hamburg, 21031 Hamburg, Germany

* For correspondence. E-mail liangey{at}itpcas.ac.cn

Received: 18 March 2009    Returned for revision: 13 May 2009    Accepted: 26 May 2009    Published electronically: 25 June 2009

Background and Aims: Shrubs and dwarf shrubs are wider spread on the Tibetan Plateau than trees and hence offer a unique opportunity to expand the present dendrochronological network into extreme environments beyond the survival limit of trees. Alpine shrublands on the Tibetan Plateau are characterized by rhododendron species. The dendrochronological potential of one alpine rhododendron species and its growth response to the extreme environment on the south-east Tibetan Plateau were investigated.

Methods: Twenty stem discs of the alpine snowy rhododendron (Rhododendron nivale) were collected close to the tongue of the Zuoqiupu Glacier in south-east Tibet, China. The skeleton plot technique was used for inter-comparison between samples to detect the growth pattern of each stem section. The ring-width chronology was developed by fitting a negative exponential function or a straight line of any slope. Bootstrapping correlations were calculated between the standard chronology and monthly climate data.

Key Results: The wood of snowy rhododendron is diffuse-porous with evenly distributed small-diameter vessels. It has well-defined growth rings. Most stem sections can be visually and statistically cross-dated. The resulting 75-year-long standard ring-width chronology is highly correlated with a timberline fir chronology about 200 km apart, providing a high degree of confidence in the cross-dating. The climate/growth association of alpine snowy rhododendron and of this timberline fir is similar, reflecting an impact of monthly mean minimum temperatures in November of the previous year and in July during the year of ring formation.

Conclusions: The alpine snowy rhododendron offers new research directions to investigate the environmental history of the Tibetan Plateau in those regions where up to now there was no chance of applying dendrochronology.

Key words: South-east Tibetan Plateau, Rhododendron nivale, alpine shrub, growth ring, cross-dating, dendroclimatological potential, climate/growth association


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