Hongbo Ling

How to Regenerate and Protect Desert Riparian Populus euphratica Forest in Arid Areas

We found that the most suitable flooding disturbance model for regenerating Populus euphratica forest was two to three times per year with a duration of 15–20 days and an intensity of 25–30 m3/s. The flooding should take place during the seed emergence to young tree growth stages, and should be based on flooding experiments and data from vegetation quadrats and ecological water conveyance. Furthermore, we found that tree-ring width index for P. euphratica declined as the groundwater depth increased, and ascertained that the minimum groundwater depths for young trees, near-mature trees, mature trees and over-mature trees were 4.0 m, 5.0–5.4 m, 6.9 m and 7.8 m, respectively. These were derived from a quantitative relationship model between groundwater depth and tree-ring width index. The range for ecological water conveyance volume was 311–320 million m3 in the lower reaches of the Tarim River. This study not only provides a technical basis for sustainable ecological water conveyance in the Tarim River Basin, but also offers a theoretical guide and scientific information that could be used in similar areas to regenerate and protect Populus euphratica around the world.

Negative feedback adjustment challenges reconstruction study from tree rings: A study case of response of Populus euphratica to river discontinuous flow and ecological water conveyance.

Drought stress changes the relationship between the growth of tree rings and variations in ambient temperature. However, it is not clear how the growth of trees changes in response to drought of varying intensities, especially in arid areas. Therefore, Tree rings were studied for 6years in Populus euphratica to assess the impacts of abrupt changes in environment on tree rings using the theories and methods in dendrohydrology, ecology and phytophysiology. The width of tree rings increased by 8.7% after ecological water conveyance downstream of Tarim River compared to that when the river water had been cut off. However, during intermediate drought, as the depth of the groundwater increases, the downward trend in the tree rings was reversed because of changes in the physiology of the tree. Therefore, the growth of tree rings shows a negative feedback to intermediate drought stress, an observation that challenges the homogenization theory of tree ring reconstruction based on the traditional methods. Owing to the time lag, the cumulative effect and the negative feedback between the growth of tree rings and drought stress, the reconstruction of past environment by studying the patterns of tree rings is often inaccurate. Our research sets out to verify the hypothesis that intermediate drought stress results in a negative feedback adjustment and thus to answers two scientific questions: (1) How does the negative feedback adjustment promote the growth of tree rings as a result of intermediate drought stress? (2) How does the negative feedback adjustment lower the accuracy with which the past is reconstructed based on tree rings? This research not only enriches the connotations of intermediate disturbance hypothesis and reconstruction theory of tree rings, but also provides a scientific basis for the conservation of desert riparian forests worldwide.