Recent Developments in Tree-ring Analysis

TOPICAL COLLECTIONS

Guest Editors

Paolo Cherubini

WSL Swiss Federal Research Institute, Birmensdorf, Switzerland; The University of British Columbia, Faculty of Forestry

Paolo Cherubini's research interests lie within tree physiology, forest ecology, and evolution, relevant to the knowledge and sustainable management of natural resources and nature conservation. He strives to understand the key processes behind tree growth, to gain a thorough understanding of the influence of environmental stress on tree physiological processes, focusing on the impact of environmental stress on wood formation. Linking dendrochronology, dendroecology with ecophysiology is the main aim of his research. Dr. Cherubini is a Senior Scientist at the WSL (Switzerland). He is an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Forest and Nature Conservation at the Faculty of Forestry of the University of British Columbia, Vancouver BC (Canada), Lecturer at the Department of Geography of the University of Zurich (Switzerland), Adjunct Research Scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of the Columbia University in New York City (U.S.A.), Adjunct Faculty at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (U.S.A.), Guest Professor at the Institute of Earth Environment of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) in Xian, China. He is editorially very active: he served 2003-2022 as Editor in Chief - and is currently Honorary Editor - of the journal Dendrochronologia, 2002-2011 as Associate Editor of Tree-Ring Research, 2011-2021 as Associate Editor of the Canadian Journal of Forest Research, 2007-2018 as member of the Editorial Board of Geochronometria, and has been a member of the editorial board of iForest and Forest@, Journal of Vegetation Science, and Tree Physiology.

Holger Gärtner

WSL Swiss Federal Research Institute, Birmensdorf, Switzerland

Dr. Holger Gärtner is a senior researcher at the Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL. He is a physical geographer specializing in wood anatomy, dendroecology, and dendrogeomorphology. He developed and refined a new technique of applying wood anatomical changes in exposed roots for more detailed reconstructions of geomorphic processes such as debris flows, avalanches, and soil erosion. Dr. Gärtner coordinated various projects focusing on integrating wood anatomical research in environmental sciences with a particular focus on geomorphological applications. The anatomical analyses of tree roots remained an area of interest in his research over the years, as reflected in several related projects on riverbank erosion, dating block displacements, or increasing the accuracy of dating roots. In recent years, Dr. Gärtner focused on wood anatomical applications in soil sciences, geomorphology, climatology, and ecology. Within these research fields, he also supervised studies focusing on shrubs in alpine and arctic environments. In parallel, he concentrated on developing new techniques to strengthen wood anatomical analyses in environmental sciences, not at least by the development of new sectioning devices. Further studies focused on functional relationships of anatomical traits in Norway spruce, the ecological meaning of wood rays in Scots pine, and anatomical analyses related to tree pests. Most recent studies gained new insights on the dendroecological potential of desert plants.

Collection Overview

Dendrochronology, the science of dating tree rings by using the characteristic patterns of annual ring-width variations in trees, evolved significantly over the past decades. Dendrochronology now uses a variety of tree-ring parameters to reconstruct the impact of environmental factors on the growth of woody plants. The development of new techniques allowed for detailed analyses of several tree-ring characteristics, such as wood density, isotopic composition, and chemical components inherent in every single ring. A very important step in this regard is the application of wood anatomical techniques in tree-ring science. The ability to analyze the physical characteristics of single cells within the rings of trees and shrubs combined with other techniques used in tree-ring sciences has led to a strong improvement in existing methods as well as to new developments.

Nowadays, dendroecological research uses multifaceted techniques to focus on various parameters inherent in tree rings, which reflect the environmental conditions acting on them during their cell development. Refined statistical methods even allow for analyzing the effect of environmental factors influencing the plants even before the onset of cambial activity.

This special collection aims at presenting the most innovative techniques currently used in tree-ring research, which now allow in-depth analyses of tree rings at the cellular scale on an intra-annual level, nevertheless focusing on the development of long, sometimes even millennial, time series.