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Teleconnection between tree growth in the Amazonian floodplains and the El Niño-Southern Oscillation effect

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Schöngart,  Jochen
Working Group Tropical Ecology, Max Planck Institute for Limnology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology, Max Planck Society;

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Junk,  Wolfgang J.
Working Group Tropical Ecology, Max Planck Institute for Limnology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology, Max Planck Society;

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Piedade,  Maria Teresa F.
Working Group Tropical Ecology, Max Planck Institute for Limnology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology, Max Planck Society;

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Worbes,  Martin
Working Group Tropical Ecology, Max Planck Institute for Limnology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology, Max Planck Society;

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Citation

Schöngart, J., Junk, W. J., Piedade, M. T. F., Ayres, J. M., Hüttermann, A., & Worbes, M. (2004). Teleconnection between tree growth in the Amazonian floodplains and the El Niño-Southern Oscillation effect. Global Change Biology, 10(5), 683-692. doi:10.1111/j.1529-8817.2003.00754.x.


Cite as: https://hdl.handle.net/11858/00-001M-0000-000F-DAEA-4
Abstract
There is a limited knowledge about the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) effects on the Amazon basin, the world's largest tropical rain forest and a major factor in the global carbon cycle. Seasonal precipitation in the Andean watershed annually causes a several month-long inundation of the floodplains along the Amazon River that induces the formation of annual rings in trees of the flooded forests. Radial growth of trees is mainly restricted to the nonflooded period and thus the ring width corresponds to its duration. This allows the construction of a tree-ring chronology of the long-living hardwood species Piranhea trifoliata Baill. (Euphorbiaceae). El Niño causes anomalously low precipitation in the catchment that results in a significantly lower water discharge of the Amazon River and consequently in an extension of the vegetation period. In those years tree rings are significantly wider. Thus the tree-ring record can be considered as a robust indicator reflecting the mean climate conditions of the whole Western Amazon basin. We present a more than 200-year long chronology, which is the first ENSO-sensitive dendroclimatic proxy of the Amazon basin and permits the dating of preinstrumental El Niño events. Time series analyses of our data indicate that during the last two centuries the severity of El Niño increased significantly.