New formula and conversion factor to compute basic wood density of tree species using a global wood technology database

Abstract

In carbon cycle research, tree wood density is used to compute forest carbon stock and assess the role of forests in mitigating climate change (Pan et al., 2011;Vieilledent et al., 2016) or evaluate the impact of deforestation on climate (Achard et al., 2014). In community ecology, wood density is a proxy for species performance (Lachenbruch and McCulloh, 2014), reflecting a trade-off between growth potential and mortality risk from biomechanical or hydraulic failure (Díaz et al., 2016). Fast-growing, short-lived species tend to have a lower wood density, while slow-growing, long-lived species tend to have a higher wood density (Chave et al., 2009;Greenwood et al., 2017). In wood technology, most physical and mechanical properties of wood (e.g., strength, stiffness, porosity, heat transmission, yield of pulp per unit volume) are closely related to wood density (Sallenave, 1955;Thibaut et al., 2001;Shmulsky and Jones, 2011). This explains why wood density has been commonly measured in forestry institutes, where wood was principally studied for construction or paper making.Wood density was originally measured at ambient air moisture after air drying (Glass and Zelinka, 2010), but is now measured at a fixed moisture content, such as 15% or the international standard of 12% (Sallenave, 1955). In temperate countries, construction wood is at equilibrium with ambient air at an average moisture close to 12%. Wood density at 12% moisture is the ratio between the mass

Wood allocation trade‐offs between fiber wall, fiber lumen, and axial parenchyma drive drought resistance in neotropical trees

“…Individual observations were complimented by species level observations from existing databases such as the global wood density database (Zanne et al, ), the global parenchyma database (Morris et al, ) and the RAINFOR Amazon‐wide tree biomass and tree growth databases (Coelho de Souza et al, ; Fauset et al, ). Also the wood density databases of the Centre de coopération internationale en recherche agronomique pour le développement (CIRAD) and of The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) were consulted (Vieilledent et al, ). The core dataset counts 11956 entries of individual observations on 3909 species from 902 genera and 155 plant families that were retrieved from 346 published studies conducted at 110 sites in Central and South America.…”

“…Species growth form was largely derived from the plant growth form dataset for the New World(Engemann et al, 2016). The taxonomic status of the original genus and species names were assessed using The Plant List-version 1.1 (http:// www.theplantlist.org) in the R package Taxonstand (Cayuela, Granzow-de la Cerda, Albuquerque, & Golicher, 2012) and the original genus and species names were replaced by the accepted names when necessary.Individual observations were complimented by species level observations from existing databases such as the global wood density database, the global parenchyma database and the RAINFOR Amazon-wide tree biomass and tree growth databases(Coelho de Souza et al, 2016;Fauset et al, 2015).Also the wood density databases of the Centre de coopération internationale en recherche agronomique pour le développement (CIRAD) and of The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) were consulted(Vieilledent et al, 2018). The core dataset counts 11956 entries of individual observations on 3909 species from 902 genera and 155 plant families that were retrieved from 346 published studies conducted at 110 sites in Central and South America.…”

New insights into large tropical tree mass and structure from direct harvest and terrestrial lidar

“…Similarly, when we used values from the Global Wood Density Database [41], error increased to 9 %. We note however that a recent study highlighted values in this database might overstate some entries by approximately 3 %, which could partly explain some of these differences [45].…”

Three-dimensional printing, muscles, and skeleton: mechanical functions of living wood

“…Biologists prefer to refer to basic density (BD), which is the ratio of anhydrous mass to green volume, two measures that are independent of the free water content of the green wood. A proportional relationship can be defined between these two density parameters: BD=0.828×D 12 (Vieilledent et al, 2018), with fairly good precision for all species.…”