Effects of climate change and local environmental factors on long-term tree water-use efficiency and growth of Pseudolarix amabilis and Cryptomeria japonica in subtropical China

Purpose: It has been well reported in many studies globally that the increased atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration has positively influenced plant growth in the past century. However, it is crucial to understand how long the tree growth trend will remain alongside the rising CO2 concentration before it is tipped over. Methods: In this study, we focused on studying the long-term tree growth responses to the rising CO2 concentration, in combination with other environmental factors, and its feedback to the changing climate. This study has reported two tree species, Pseudolarix amabilis (P. amabilis) and Cryptomeria japonica (C. japonica), sampled from a subtropical monsoon forest located in eastern China, and established the long-term tree ring chronologies by applying tree ring width measurement and cross dating, and then, basal area increment (BAI) was calculated. Meanwhile, intrinsic water-use efficiency (iWUE) was calculated through the measurement of carbon isotope composition (δ13C) in tree ring samples, and its relationships with BAI and atmospheric CO2 concentration were also quantified. Results: BAI values continuously increased in both P. amabilis and C. japonica with the rising of CO2 concentration until the atmospheric CO2 concentration tipping points were reached, after which tree growth started to decline with the rising CO2, while iWUE exerted a continuous increase trend with the increasing CO2 concentration. Conclusions: Tree growth of both species was more photosynthesis driven before reaching the maximum BAI points, once the tipping points of atmospheric CO2 were passed, leading to the positive feed of forest carbon cycling to climate change and global warming. Therefore, tree growth was more water limitation driven in the last 20 years.