Development of a Tree-Ring Network for the Italian Peninsula

Abstract

This article describes the analysis of tree-ring collections from standing trees of sixteen species at twenty sites distributed throughout the Italian Peninsula. Visual and numerical crossdating among ring widths allowed the computation of standard and residual tree-ring chronologies. Relationships among chronologies were identified by Spearman's coefficient of rank correlation, using Bonferroni's inequality to adjust significance level. The oldest living tree sampled to date is a 963-year old palebark pine (Pinus leucodermis Ant.) at Parco del Pollino. Individuals more than two centuries old were identified at eleven sites for eight species. The tree-ring network so far consists of twenty-two chronologies for nine species at nineteen sites. Seven conifer species account for ten chronologies and two angiosperm species account for the remaining twelve chronologies. The most represented species is Fagus sylvatica L., with eleven chronologies distributed over the entire peninsula and highly correlated with one another. The order of autoregressive models fitted to the data never exceeded two. In particular, the order of autoregressive models fitted to Fagus sylvatica chronologies decreased with decreasing age of sampled trees. Based on the significant coefficients of rank correlation, residual chronologies of Fagus sylvatica could be separated into northern, central, and southern groups. This points to the existence of broad regions distributed along a latitudinal gradient, corresponding to large-scale climatic regimes over the Italian Peninsula.