Recent influence of climate and environment on coniferous tree growth at treelines of the Northeastern Tibetan Plateau [Elektronische Ressource] / Yongxiang Zhang

Recent influence of climate and environment on coniferous tree growth at treelines of the Northeastern Tibetan Plateau - divergent growth trends question traditional dendroclimatology? Inauguraldissertation zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades doctorum rerum naturalium (Dr. rer. nat.) an der Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftlichen Fakult¨at der Ernst-Moritz-Arndt-Universit¨at Greifswald vorgelegt von Yongxiang Zhang geboren am 30.11.1980 in Ningxia Greifswald 06. March 2011 Dekan: Prof. Dr. K. Fesser 1. Gutachter: Prof. Dr. M. Wilmking 2. Gutachter: Prof. Dr. D. Eckstein Tag der Promotion: 12/10/2011  Abstract Forests cover ~30% of the land surface and store ~45% of terrestrial carbon, contribute ~50% of terrestrial net primary production and can sequester large amounts of carbon annually. Recent climate change has affected the forest system comprehensively. Northern hemisphere elevational treelines are considered as a key environment for monitoring the effects of current anthropogenic climate change. Moreover, trees from these areas are also widely employed in paleo-climate reconstructions since it is generally assumed that the tree growth climate relationships can be calculated by an approximate simple linear regression. The stability of the tree growth climate relationship under current scenario is crucial for all tree ring based climate researches.