The rate of tree growth varies by species and is influenced by elevation and climate gradients. Assessing the influence of these variables on tree-ring growth can improve projections for tree growth under future climate conditions. Here, we evaluate the relationships between tree species,...

Tree ring investigations at the high altitude mountains of the Karakoram-Himalaya, northern Pakistan have received limited attention concerning the climate-tree growth relationship studies. To test the climate-growth relationship, we developed four tree-ring width (TRW) standard chronologies...

Knowledge of past climatic variability for the Tibetan Plateau (TP), especially the northwestern part of it, is still limited due to the lack of long-term meteorological records. Within this study, we developed a summer (June - July) minimum temperature reconstruction since 1681 based on annual...

Climatic change is exhibiting significant effects on the ecosystem of the Tibetan Plateau (TP), a climate-sensitive area. In particularly, winter frost, freezing events and snow avalanche frequently causing severe effects on ecosystem and social economy, however, few long-term winter temperature...

In harsh and treeless environments, shrubs constitute the dominant growth form of woody plants, thus offering the opportunity to extend dendrochronological networks beyond the uppermost and northernmost distribution limits of trees. However, shrub-based dendrochronology has so far resulted in only...

Atmospheric circulations influence local and regional weather conditions and, thus, tree growth. To identify summer weather types relevant for tree growth, and their associated synoptic-scale circulation patterns, an atmospheric circulation tree ring index (ACTI) dataset, derived from 414 tree-ring ...

In the study area, Pinus wallichiana one of the most dominant species at upper timberline, reaching age up to 700-years old was selected for the dendroclimatological study in the Karakoram region, northern Pakistan. In this paper, we demonstrated the relationship between its radial growth and...

Over the last several decades, riparian forests in Northwest China have been extremely vulnerable to the increasing pressures from human activity and climate change. However, it is unclear how forests correlate with these influences over time and on a wide scale. In the present study, we developed...

Schrenk spruce (Picea schrenkiana) is a crucial tree species in the western Tianshan Mountains of northwest China and plays a vital role in local ecosystems; it is of particular importance to assess the growth response of this species to climate in the context of global climate change. In this...

In contrast to a global retreating trend, glaciers in the Karakoram showed stability and/or mass gaining during the past decades. This "Karakoram Anomaly" has been assumed to result from an out-of-phase temperature trend compared to hemispheric scales. However, the short instrumental observations...