Climate/growth relationships of Brachystegia spiciformis from the miombo woodland in south central Africa

Abstract We present five Brachystegia spiciformis Benth. (BrSp) tree-ring chronologies from the seasonally dry miombo woodland in south central Africa. Between 9 and 34 stem discs were collected from three dry and two wet miombo sites. All samples showed distinct growth rings, which were marked by terminal parenchyma bands. Site chronologies varied in length between 43 and 149 years. An increase in the number of growth ring anomalies in older trees, however, resulted in an increase in dating error and a decrease in between-tree correlations with increase in the chronology length. Annual precipitation variability accounted for some 28% of the common variance in the BrSp chronologies and we f…