Isabel Dorado Liñán

Universidad Politécnica de Madrid | UPM · Natural Systems and Forest History

Tree-ring intra-annual stable isotopes (δ13C and δ18O) are powerful tools for revealing plant ecophysiological responses to climatic extremes. We analyzed interannual and fine-scale intra-annual variability of tree-ring δ13C and δ18O in Pinus massoniana from southeastern China to explore environmental drivers and potential trade-offs between the ma...

The mechanistic pathways connecting ocean-atmosphere variability and terrestrial productivity are well-established theoretically, but remain challenging to quantify empirically. Such quantification will greatly improve the assessment and prediction of changes in terrestrial carbon sequestration in response to dynamically induced climatic extremes....

The growth of past, present, and future forests was, is and will be affected by climate variability. This multifaceted relationship has been assessed in several regional studies, but spatially resolved, large-scale analyses are largely missing so far. Here we estimate recent changes in growth of 5800 beech trees ( Fagus sylvatica L.) from 324 sites...

The Mediterranean region is expected to be highly impacted by global warming, although the uncertainty of future scenarios, particularly about precipitation patterns remains quite large. To better predict shifts in its current climate system and to test models, more regional climate records are needed spanning longer than the instrumental period. H...

In this chapter we introduce the climate signal in stable isotope tree-ring records, with the emphasis on temperate forests. The development of the subdiscipline is recapped followed by an exploration of isotope dendroclimatic records by geography and, broadly, by isotopic species. Whilst there are still questions to be answered around signal stren...

Temperature and precipitation variability throughout the year control the intra-annual dynamics of tree-ring formation. Physiological adaptation of trees to climate change is among the key issues to better understand and predict future forest performance and composition. In this study, we investigated the species’ coexistence and performance of Sco...

This is the first Europe-wide comprehensive assessment of the climatological and physiological information recorded by hydrogen isotope ratios in tree-ring cellulose (δ²Hc) based on a unique collection of annually resolved 100-year tree-ring records of two genera (Pinus and Quercus) from 17 sites (36°N to 68°N). We observed that the high-frequency...

The Mediterranean is one of the regions of the world where human-induced climate warming is expected to have large impacts on water and environmental resources. To predict shifts in the current climate system, more regional climate records, including seasonal-to-century scale variability spanning longer than the instrumental periods, are needed. To...

Recent studies have identified strong relationships between delayed recovery of tree growth after drought and tree mortality caused by subsequent droughts. These observations raise concerns about forest ecosystem services and post-drought growth recovery given the projected increase in drought frequency and extremes. For quantifying the impact of e...

The longevity of trees is a major life‐history trait that could provide crucial information about ecological history, forest dynamics and the carbon cycle. Studying the longevity of trees in different environments in response to climate change is a research priority for both nature conservation and climate change mitigation strategies (Körner 2017,...

There is a lack of knowledge on how tree species respond to climatic constraints like water shortages and related atmospheric patterns across broad spatial and temporal scales. These assessments are needed to project which populations will better tolerate or respond to global warming across the tree species distribution range. Warmer and drier cond...

Forest decline under environmental stress is expressed by regeneration failure and accelerated mortality in all ontogenic stages at the population level. Characterizing functional traits and mechanisms that best capture species decline and mortality is essential to assess forest dynamics. We analyzed sensitivity to increasing water stress in two sp...

Tree species have good tolerance to a range of environmental conditions, though their ability to respond and persist to environmental changes is dramatically reduced at the rear-edge distribution limits. At those edges, gene flow conferring adaptation is impaired due to lack of populations at lower latitudes. Thus, trees mainly rely on phenotypic c...

The ratio of leaf-internal (ci) to ambient (ca) partial pressure of CO2, defined here as χ, is an index of adjustments in both leaf stomatal conductance and photosynthetic rate to environmental conditions. Measurements and proxies of this ratio can be used to constrain vegetation models uncertainties for predicting terrestrial carbon uptake and wat...

Aim The aim was to decipher Europe‐wide spatio‐temporal patterns of forest growth dynamics and their associations with carbon isotope fractionation processes inferred from tree rings as modulated by climate warming. Location Europe and North Africa (30‒70° N, 10° W‒35° E). Time period 1901‒2003. Major taxa studied Temperate and Euro‐Siberian tre...

Understanding how climate has modulated forest growth and composition in the past is necessary to predict the influence of the ongoing climate warming on the dynamics of mountain forests. We studied the past dynamics of subalpine Pyrenean forests during the last 700 years by assessing the relationships between sedimentary pollen and tree-ring recor...

Climatically controlled allocation to reproduction is a key mechanism by which climate influences tree growth and may explain lagged correlations between climate and growth. We used continent-wide datasets of tree-ring chronologies and annual reproductive effort in Fagus sylvatica from 1901-2015 to characterise relationships between climate, reprod...

Based on macroecological data, we test the hypothesis whether European tree species of temperate and boreal distribution maintain their water and nutrient supply in the more arid southern margin of their distribution range by shifting to more fertile soils with higher water storage than in their humid core distribution range (cf. soil compensatory...

Climate change-induced rise of air temperatures and the increase of extreme climatic events, such as droughts, will largely affect plant growth and hydraulics, leading to mortality events all over the globe. In this study, we investigated the growth and hydraulic responses of seedlings of contrasting functional types. Pinus sylvestris, Quercus spp....

In forests, the increase of atmospheric CO2 concentrations (Ca) has been related to enhanced tree growth and intrinsic water-use efficiency (iWUE). However, in drought-prone areas such as the Mediterranean Basin it is not yet clear to what extent this ‘fertilizing’ effect may compensate for drought-induced growth reduction. We investigated tree gro...

Growth of old trees in cold-limited forests may benefit from recent climate warming and rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations (ca) if age-related constraints do not impair wood formation. To test this hypothesis, we studied old Mountain pine trees at three Pyrenean high-elevation forests subjected to cold-wet (ORD, AIG) or warmer-drier (PED) condit...

Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) is a widely used tree species in European dendroclimatology studies due to its common distribution across much of the continent. Almost all studies find radial growth strongly related to summer temperature, a result reflecting site selection at high elevation/latitude environments where trees grow at their ecophysio...

European beech (Fagus sylvatica L.) forests in the Iberian Peninsula are a clear example of a temperate forest tree species at the rear edge of its large distribution area in Europe. The expected drier and warmer climate may alter tree growth and species distribution. Consequently, the peripheral populations will most likely be the most threatened...

Forest performance is challenged by climate change but higher atmospheric [CO2 ] (ca ) could help trees mitigate the negative effect of enhanced water stress. Forest projections using data-assimilation with mechanistic models are a valuable tool to assess forest performance. Firstly, we used dendrochronological data from 12 Mediterranean tree speci...

Overlaid to a general reduction of European beech and sessile oak tree growth over the recent decades in the Mediterranean Basin, tree-ring records from western Mediterranean populations display a stronger growth decrease than eastern populations. We investigate here to what extent the impact of sustained atmospheric circulation patterns in summert...

Drought is a key limiting factor for tree growth in the Mediterranean Basin. However, the variability in acclimation via xylem traits is largely unknown. We studied tree growth and vessel features of Quercus petraea (Matt.) Lieb. in five marginal stands across southern Europe. Tree-ring width (TRW), mean earlywood vessel area (MVA) and number of ea...

Many temperate European tree species have their southernmost distribution limits in the Mediterranean Basin. The projected climatic conditions, particularly an increase in dryness, might induce an altitudinal and latitudinal retreat at their southernmost distribution limit. Therefore, characterizing the morphological and physiological variability o...

Old-growth forests, particularly those located at the interface between different bioregions, are unevaluable sources of long-term vegetation dynamics and historical stand response to natural and anthropogenic disturbance. Although old-growth forest are scarce, the information gathered studying them may assist forest ecosystem restoration and manag...

Although solar radiation at the surface plays a determinant role in carbon discrimination in tree rings, stable carbon isotope chronologies (δ13C) have often been interpreted as a temperature proxy due to the co-variability of temperature and surface solar radiation. Furthermore, even when surface solar radiation is assumed to be the main driver of...

Assessments of climate change impacts on forests and their vitality are essential for semi-arid environments such as Central Asia, where the mountain regions belong to the globally important biodiversity hotspots. Alterations in species distribution or drought-induced tree mortality might not only result in a loss of biodiversity but also in a loss...

Sampling sites utilized in this study. Information include country code (CC), latitude (Lat, °N), longitude (Lon, °E), elevation (Elev, m asl), exposition (Exp), species (Juniperus sp. (JUSP), J. seravschanica (JUSE), J. semiglobosa (JUSM), and J. turkistanica (JUTU)), the number of trees (n) and TRW series (n), start and end year over the full and...

Pearson correlation results for all juniper sites and sites closest grid point data for monthly (current year January to December) and seasonal a) temperature means and b) precipitation sums for the full 1935–2011 period. Sites within the region are sorted based on increasing longitude and within the region from high to low elevation sites (Kh. = K...

Differences in climate response from 1935–1964 to 1982–2011 of all juniper sites for monthly (current year January to December) and seasonal a) temperature means and b) precipitation sums. Sites within the region are sorted based on increasing longitude and within the region from high to low elevation (Kh. = Khaidarkan, S.C. = Sari Chelek, K.A. = K...

Detrended tree-ring width (TRW) chronologies developed for Uzbekistan (UZ) and Kyrgyzstan (KG), shown for the 20th century. See Fig 1 for specific location of the sites and regions. Grey squares highlight the 1935–1964 and 1982–2011 periods used in the analyses. (EPS)

Detrended tree-ring width chronologies used in this study. (XLSX)

Tree-ring based temperature reconstructions form a substantial part of the international proxy data base used to examine and model global climate variations of the last Millennium. However, most tree-ring based reconstructions are derived from study sites in the high latitudes or high altitudes, paying very little attention to low elevation sites....

In the face of climate warming, maps of potential tree species distribution can support forest management planning at coarse scales. For evaluating future suitability, conditions at the rear edge, i.e. at the meridional and lower altitudinal limits of species distribution, are of particular importance. Therefore, we present the concept of climatic...

European beech Fagus sylvatica L. represents one of the most commercially and ecologically important forest tree species in Europe. The study of climate-growth relationships may provide relevant information to assist projections of future species' distribution as well as forest management strategies. In this study, 9 European beech stands were sele...

July-to-October temperature variations are reconstructed for the last 800 years based on tree-ring widths from the Cazorla Range. Annual tree-ring width at this site has been found to be negatively correlated with temperature of the previous summer. This relationship is genuine, metabolically plausible, and cannot be explained as an indirect correl...

The increasing carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration in the atmosphere in combination with climatic changes throughout the last century are likely to have had a profound effect on the physiology of trees: altering the carbon and water fluxes passing through the stomatal pores. However, the magnitude and spatial patterns of such changes in natural fore...

A novel procedure has been developed to conduct cell structure measurements on increment core samples of conifers. The procedure combines readily available hardware and software equipment. The essential part of the procedure is the application of a confocal laser scanning microscope (CLSM) which captures images directly from increment cores surface...

In the eastern Mediterranean in general and in Turkey in particular, temperature reconstructions based on tree rings have not been achieved so far. Furthermore, centennial-long chronologies of stable isotopes are generally also missing. Recent studies have identified the tree species Juniperus excelsa as one of the most promising tree species in Tu...

Tree-ring chronologies of Pinus sylvestris L. from latitudinal and altitudinal limits of the species distribution have been widely used for climate reconstructions, but there are many sites within the temperate climate zone, as is the case in northeastern Germany, at which there is little evidence of a clear climate signal in the chronologies. In t...

Detecting and extracting the dominant climatic signal from tree-ring records derived from Mediterranean areas remains challenging because the relation between climate and treegrowth are usually characterized by a complex interplay of temperature and precipitation signals, with high spatial and temporal variability. Although several studies have est...

Aging in trees implies a progressive reduction in the growth rate, related to a shortening of the growing period and changes in the photosynthetic capability and efficiency. These changes may continue during the old-growth life stages following the juvenile phase and are reflected in tree-ring properties such as growth increment, density or stable...

May-to-September mean temperatures over the larger Pyrenees area (Northern Spain and Southern France) are reconstructed for the last Millennium from 22 maximum density (MXD) tree-ring chronologies. For the standardization of the tree-ring series, two detrending methods (Regional Curve Standardization (RCS) and 300-yr spline) were combined with and...

An annual-resolved precipitation reconstruction for the last 800 yr in Southern Spain has been performed using stable carbon isotope (δ13C) of Pinus nigra tree rings. The reconstruction exhibits high- to low-frequency variability and distinguishes a Little Ice Age (LIA, AD 1350-1850) characterized by lower averaged rainfall than both in the transit...

Mediterranean tree rings have seldom been used for dendroecological and dendro-climatological studies. The few studies have been restricted to high elevation trees. On this paper we made a comparison on the tree ring anomalies along an inland/coast gradient on the East Span-ish Mediterranean ecosystems. These anomalies were related to geographical...