Dendrochronological Study on Tree Growth Responses to Climate in Okutama, Tokyo I. Construction of tree-ring chronologies for seven tree species

Tree-ring samples were collected from seven tree species growing in Okutama, Tokyo. Annual ring width and density were measured and uniform standardizing smoothing functions were used to extract information on tree-growth responses to climate. A cubic spline function with a 50% frequency response of ten years was evaluated as appropriate for the standardizing smoothing function in all seven chronologies. Chronologies of indices for ring width and ring density were then constructed for each tree species, and it was found that inter-annual variation was common to almost all of the tree species examined. Further, different patterns of inter-annual variation were observed in the chronologies derived from ring width indices and ring density indices. The variation component included in the tree-ring chronologies tended to be more similar between closely-related species than between less closely-related species.