Can tree-rings inform assisted migration? Revisiting provenance trials across Atlantic Canada to compare local adaptation between red spruce populations
Bibliographic record
Abstract
As climate niches of most tree species are projected to shift rapidly in the coming decades, forest-assisted migration (FAM) of populations from warmer sites is a promising silvicultural tool to help forests adapt to global changes. However, additional knowledge on species-specific local genetic adaptation and phenotypic plasticity is needed to inform the deployment of FAM in forest management. Here we applied a novel dendroecological approach to a unique network of ten 60 year-old provenance trials covering a large climate gradient in eastern Canada to assess the FAM potential of red spruce, a species unique to the Acadian-Wabanaki forest region projected to decline under climate change. We first controlled for non-climatic growth drivers by applying a Bayesian hierarchical model to individual, annual tree growth records extracted from tree-rings. Non-climatic variables explained 75.6 % and 92 % (posterior mean Bayesian R 2 ) of tree-level and site-level growth, respectively. Across populations and sites, residual annual growth displayed the strongest correlations with summer climate, with growth declines during warm and dry summer conditions. In contrast with summer patterns, warmer and drier spring conditions were generally favorable to growth, while winter temperatures had only marginal associations with growth. To test the hypothesis that red spruce populations from warmer locations are good candidates for assisted migration, we assessed significant changes in climate-growth correlations as a function of climate transfer distance, calculated as the differences between population origin climate and climate at each trial site. We found that trees moved to colder sites, which simulates standard FAM practices, were significantly less sensitive to summer water deficit and changes in precipitation. However, additional variation in climatic sensitivity to summer temperature suggests potential risks at elevated transfer distances. Results from our application of dendroecology to existing provenance trials provides support for red spruce as a candidate species for FAM. • Forest Assisted migration (FAM) helps adjust forest composition to climate change. • FAM success requires that translocated trees outperform local populations. • We test the FAM potential of red spruce across a network of provenance trials. • Red spruce trees moved to colder sites were less sensitive to moisture stress. • Our results provide support for red spruce FAM.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.004 | 0.006 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".