Drought‐induced stomatal closure probably cannot explain divergent white spruce growth in the Brooks Range, Alaska, USA

Increment cores from the boreal forest have long been used to reconstruct past climates. However, in recent years, numerous studies have revealed a deterioration of the correlation between temperature and tree growth that is commonly referred to as "divergence". In the Brooks Range of northern Alaska, studies of white spruce (Picea glauca) revealed that trees in the west generally showed positive growth trends, while trees in the central and eastern Brooks Range showed mixed and negative trends during late 20th century warming. The growing season climate of the eastern Brooks Range is thought to be drier than the west. On this basis, divergent tree growth in the eastern Brooks Range has been attributed to drought stress. To investigate the hypothesis that drought-induced stomatal closure can explain divergence in the Brooks Range, we synthesized all of the Brooks Range white spruce data available in the International Tree Ring Data Bank (ITRDB) and collected increment cores from our primary sites in each ...