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Individual tree-ring series may show changed growth trends and divergent climate-growth associations even within a site, highlighting the need to examine tree growth and its climate association before building a chronology. We provided a case study for the stratification and temporal variability of tree growth and its climate associations of individual cores for three mountain ranges in north central China. Tree growth is mainly limited by moisture conditions in previous July-September and current June-August. Repeated sampling and field investigations of Picea wilsonii at Xinglong Mountain over a growth year of 2004 suggested that the growing season is from about the end of April to the end of September. It appears that the moisture conditions in previous and current growing seasons are crucial for tree growth in this region. However, a decrease in drought limitation was observed for a few tree-ring series. We thereby built the pooled chronology and sub-site chronologies with only drought-sensitive tree rings similar climate-growth relationships from the three mountain slopes. Growth disturbances of tree-ring series are detected by checking the occurrence of successively low values of the biweight series, which are treated by fitting a flexible curve. (C) 2012 Istituto Italian di Dendrocronologia. Published by Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.