A 435-year-long European black pine (Pinus nigra) chronology for the central-western Balkan region

Abstract

We describe the development of the first black pine (Pinus nigra Arnold) regional chronology for the central-western Balkan area, Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), based on seven site chronologies from different parts of the country. Pointer-year analysis identified a common signal (possibly climate) in the site chronologies—at least five positive (1876, 1930, 1941, 1969) and nine negative pointer years (1874, 1880, 1891, 1931, 1943, 1963, 1971, 1987, 2000) are common to all seven study sites. Site chronologies were compared using statistical parameters and visual crossdating, from which we constructed a 435-year-long tree-ring width chronology for P. nigra for BiH and compared it with existing P. nigra chronologies from Montenegro, Greece, Albania, Austria (Vienna region), and France (Corsica). The resulting statistical and visual similarity indicated that the chronology has a strong regional signal and therefore can be included in the dendrochronological network for P. nigra for the Western Balkans.