Climate influences on the radial growth of Centrolobium microchaete, a valuable timber species in the tropical dry forests of Bolivia

LIDIO LOPEZ AND RICARDO VILLALBA

Rovaniemi, Finland

Congreso; WorldDendro 2010; 2010

The lack and shortness of instrumental records in the tropical forests of Bolivia limit ourunderstanding on regional climate variability. Therefore, it is necessary to use proxyclimaticrecords to reconstruct past environmental changes. Tree rings provide continuousseries with annual resolution which can be modeled to accurately reconstruct annual variationsof temperature, precipitation and, atmospheric pressure during the past centuries.Our goal was to develop chronologies with Centrolobium microchaete (Tarara amarilla)and determine the relationships between the radial growth of this species and the climaticvariations during the 20th century in different eco-regions of the tropical Cerrado Boliviano.