## 1 Introduction  
Across China, plantations of Chinese fir (_Cunningham lanceolata_ (Lamb.) Hook) and Masson Pine (_Pinus massoniana_) have been utilized for more than one thousand years [1; 2; 3]. As one of the most important subtropical coniferous species, Chinese fir plays a major role in the environment, timber supply, and human society. According to [PERSON] [4], forest inventory data indicates that Chinese fir occupies 30% of all plantations in China, covering approximately 9 million ha, principally in southern China with its timber accounting for one quarter of China's national commercial timber production [5]. Since 1949 the area of Chinese fir plantations has nearly tripled with an increased focus on afforestation and reforestation [6; 7; 8; 9; 10]. Chinese fir is a valued timber species due to its high quality wood (_i.e._, straight and decay resistant) as well as having significant cultural and historic values in China. Chinese fir is often used in building construction and furniture manufacturing [2] as well as in the provision of other ecosystem services including local water supply and organic matter storage [11]. Fast growing plantations also provide an opportunity for increasing terrestrial carbon stocks and therefore are suggested as an approach to efficiently mitigate the impacts of global climate change [12]. Chinese fir is characterized by its fast growth rate when grown in a monoculture plantation, producing volumes of up to 450 m\({}^{3}\)/ha after 25 years [1,2]. Therefore, a comprehensive knowledge of Chinese fir in terms of its contribution in carbon sequestration will allow a better development of plantation, afforestation, and forest management strategies in general throughout China. Given the ecological, social, and carbon values of Chinese fir, improving our understanding and knowledge of Chinese fir growth and how a changing climate may alter the distribution is needed. This is important particularly due to its popularity as a fast growing plantation species and concerns that the volume yields and carbon storage may progressively deteriorate over multiple rotations [13; 14; 15]. Understanding the distribution and productivity of the species both now and into the future is critical, when linked to local management strategies, such as silvicultural practices, as it provides an estimate of the commercial value of the species, timber supply, and assessment of the other ecosystem goods and services the species provides. Climatic factors such as temperature and precipitation strongly affect the physiology of a tree species [16; 17], and as a result, changes in climate are likely to alter both the distribution and growth of the species in the future. China, like most regions globally, is undergoing climatic changes in terms of temperature, precipitation, and accordingly their seasonal and regional variations [18; 19; 20]. In response to climate change, four possible responses of both organisms and ecosystems are expected--first, changes in phenology and physiology of living organisms; second, changes in the distribution of species; third, changes in the community compositions and interactions among components; fourth, the arrangement and dynamics of ecosystems [21]. Once climate changes beyond the tolerances of a species, the survival and productivity of the species will be compromised. Under this changing climate regime, it is unclear whether the historic colonized distributions of certain species will remain and stay as productive as they currently are. Modeling growth and species distributions is therefore necessary for assessing forest stands and will specifically benefit foresters in terms of scheduling harvest rotation, predicting profits, and more importantly mitigating a changing climate. Conventional statistical growth and yield approaches are often used to predict future stand growth but are based on past climate/growth relations and are therefore limited in their capacity to estimate stand growth under more variable future climate conditions.