Abstract
<title>Abstract</title> <p> Accelerating warming across the Himalayan arc is reshaping the growth dynamics of montane conifers, yet elevation-stratified dendroclimatic analyses remain rare in the Pakistani Lesser Himalayas. The present study characterizes climate-growth relationships in <italic>Pinus roxburghii</italic> Sarg. (Chir Pine) across a continuous elevational transect (400–1,500 m) at two localities — Kahuta and Latrar — in northern Punjab, Pakistan. Tree-ring width (TRW) chronologies were constructed from 80 high-quality increment cores retained after quality screening of an initial 98 cores collected from 52 mature trees. Standardized chronologies span 70–87 years (lower band 1952–2021; middle and upper bands 1934–2021) and all exceed the accepted Expressed Population Signal (EPS) threshold of 0.85. Bootstrapped monthly correlation analyses with CRU-TS 4.08 gridded climate data (Harris et al., 2020) reveal March precipitation as the dominant positive growth driver across all three elevation bands (r = +0.38 to +0.44, p ≤ 0.01), while March temperature consistently suppresses radial growth (r = −0.39 to −0.42, p ≤ 0.01). Elevation modulates the seasonal breadth of these responses: lower elevations (400–800 m) show an additional positive association with monsoon-season July rainfall; middle elevations (800–1,200 m) integrate multi-season moisture signals, including a prior-year monsoon legacy; and upper elevations (1,200–1,500 m) display the broadest and strongest signal, governed by snowmelt-pulse moisture and compound prior- and current-year thermal stress. These results confirm <italic>P. roxburghii</italic> as a sensitive bioindicator of lower-montane hydroclimatic variability in the Lesser Himalayas and establish a baseline for climate-responsive forest management under projected warming. </p>