Resolving seasonality in tropical trees: multi-decade, high-resolution oxygen and carbon isotope records from Indonesia and Thailand

Dendrochronological techniques have found limited applications in the tropics because of invisible or indistinct banding in wood. The seasonal cycles of rainfall and relative humidity in these regions, while not sufficient to produce distinct visible rings, may still generate seasonal signals in the oxygen isotopic composition of tree cellulose which can be used for climate reconstruction and chronology. We explore this approach using trees from Indonesia and Thailand, from three different families. Multi-decade δ18O records from Javanese cross-dated teak rings and bomb radiocarbon-dated Suar wood lacking visible rings demonstrate the reproducibility of the signal between trees grown at the same locality as well as from wider geographical regions. These results confirm predictions that the trees oxygen isotopic signatures reflect an external climatic forcing. High-resolution δ18O records reveal large seasonal cycles: up to 4‰ for Javanese Suar samples and up to 18‰ for a Thai Podocarpus sample. We show that the six δ18O and δ13C cycles measured on a Podocarpus match the number of growth years for the period spanning the time of wounding and cutting of the wedge section. This result demonstrates that the isotopic cycles found in this tree with indistinct annual rings are indeed seasonal and could be used for chronology. We present evidence that stable isotope chronologies of tropical trees also contain insights in tropical tree physiology and growth dynamics.