Dendroecology 2022

Researchers are pairing data from long-term measurements on tree growth and mortality with data from tree cores the learn about the the influence of disturbance and elevation on tree growth and survival. These projects aim at contributing to our understanding of how competing drivers (i.e. micro-topography, climate variability, and competition) impact two key ecological processes: postfire-delayed mortality and tree growth. For the first study, we are using treerings collected in an old-growth forest to look at the effects of pre- and post-fire radial growth patterns and climate-growth relationships, and fine-scale tree-to-tree competition, on tree mortality in fire-injury trees that originally had survived the 2020 Holiday Farm Fire, but then were found dead by 2022. For the non-fire-related studies, we are using treerings to look at the two aspects: the influence of micro-topography, as a surrogate of soil water availability and micro-climate, as well as climate variability, on trends and variation in growth and its responses to climate in a young post-clearcut stand, and at the effect of climate trends and variability and tree-to-tree competition on growth trends and climate-growth relationships in old growth stands across an elevational (temperature) gradient. These efforts are complementing the ongoing monitoring and expansion of long-term measurements on tree growth and mortality at the HJA, and hope to contribute to better predicting tree and forest vulnerability in a warming world.