Combining different climate datasets better reflects the response of warm-temperate forests to climate: a case study from Mt. Dongling, Beijing

Abstract

Accurately assessing the relationship between tree growth and climatic factors is of great importance in dendrochronology. This study evaluated the consistency between alternative climate datasets (including station and gridded data) and actual climate data (fixed-point observations near the sampling sites), in northeastern China’s warm temperate zone and analyzed differences in their correlations with tree-ring width index. The results were: (1) Gridded temperature data, as well as precipitation and relative humidity data from the Huailai meteorological station, was more consistent with the actual climate data; in contrast, gridded soil moisture content data showed significant discrepancies. (2) Horizontal distance had a greater impact on the representativeness of actual climate conditions than vertical elevation differences. (3) Differences in consistency between alternative and actual climate data also affected their correlations with tree-ring width indices. In some growing season months, correlation coefficients, both in magnitude and sign, differed significantly from those based on actual data. The selection of different alternative climate datasets can lead to biased results in assessing forest responses to climate change, which is detrimental to the management of forest ecosystems in harsh environments. Therefore, the scientific and rational selection of alternative climate data is essential for dendroecological and climatological research.

The online version is available at https://link.springer.com/.

Corresponding editor: Tao Xu.

The online version contains supplementary material available at https://doi.org/10.1007/s11676-025-01927-7.

Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.

Keywords

Climate data representativeness / Alternative climate data selection / Response differences / Deciduous broad-leaf forest / Warm temperate zone

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