The longevity of broadleaf deciduous trees in Northern Hemisphere temperate forests: insights from tree-ring series

Filippo, Alfredo Di; Pederson, Neil; Baliva, Michele; Brunetti, Michele; Dinella, Anna; Kitamura, Keiko; Knapp, Hanns D.; Schirone, Bartolomeo; Piovesan, Gianluca

doi:10.3389/fevo.2015.00046

Cited by 77 publications

(79 citation statements)

References 77 publications

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“…This study demonstrates that old‐growth beech forests are characterized by distinctive slow growth processes that underpin extraordinary tree longevity (Di Filippo et al . ), which adds further value to the unique biological and ecological features making primary forests irreplaceable for nature conservation (e.g. Barlow et al .…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Site conditions affect the pace of ecological processes during the recovery of natural attributes, via their control over tree lifespan and turnover rates (Di Filippo et al . ), hampering the use of age or structural metrics to compare forests from different environments (Ziaco et al . ), unless adjustments are made for site differences (Lorimer & Halpin ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Tree ring‐based metrics for assessing old‐growth forest naturalness

Filippo

Biondi

Piovesan

et al. 2016

Journal of Applied Ecology

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Summary Old‐growth studies commonly emphasize structural and age conditions, selecting proxy indicators of long‐term ecological processes. Transition dynamics from mature to old‐growth status reveal how natural legacies are progressively accumulated in forests after major disturbances, including human ones. In late‐successional, multi‐aged forests, the chronosequential ranking of developmental stages is a difficult task, as stand age provides little information, and time since last stand‐replacing disturbance cannot be easily determined. Canopy age features, disturbance/suppression history and growth trajectories were reconstructed from ring‐width series of canopy trees in a network of 19 old‐growth and managed European beech forests in the eastern Alps and central Apennines. A set of tree‐ring metrics able to describe the intensity and time distribution of biological and ecological processes (e.g. understorey suppression, canopy accession age) were used to describe the advancement of old‐growth status and compared to established metrics of forest structure. Tree‐ring metrics were site dependent, as biogeoclimate affects turnover rates and constrains the onset and recovery rate of old‐growth attributes. Under the same environmental conditions (high‐mountain, limestone‐bedrock beech forests), values of the best indicators (number/duration of growth suppression phases; synchronicity of first release; maximum and range of canopy tree age; canopy accession age of the slowest‐growing trees) increased monotonically (two to five times) from managed to secondary and primary old‐growth forests. Trees in well‐conserved primary old‐growth forests experienced several and long suppressions, showing the highest complexity in recruitment history, canopy accession and growth trajectories. The best tree‐ring metrics, condensed in a Naturalness Score to provide a synthetic functional ranking of forests, varied coherently with structural complexity, which represented stand dynamics more closely than biomass‐related metrics. Synthesis and applications. We propose a synthetic ranking of forest functional naturalness based on the ecological processes experienced by trees. This ranking helps to overcome the limitations associated with the use of arbitrary size‐ or age‐related thresholds of old‐growth status and provides a functional approach to establish chronosequences in ecological studies. The quantitative description of complex processes underpinning the unique biological and ecological features (e.g. extreme tree longevity) found in primary old‐growth forests enhances their irreplaceable value in nature conservation. The proposed framework of tree‐ring indicators describes functional traits tightly related to forest naturalness and may thus become a tool to identify and protect old‐growth forests, benchmark the impact of silvicultural practices, prescribe targets or evaluate the effectiveness of restoration programmes.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tree ring‐based metrics for assessing old‐growth forest naturalness

Filippo

Biondi

Piovesan

et al. 2016

Journal of Applied Ecology

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“…The studies performed in Europe in temperate areas at low altitude have all been conducted on pedonculate and sessile oak ( Quercus robur and Quercus petraea ). Both oaks are long‐lived trees (up to 600 years), widespread from southern Scandinavia to the northern part of the Iberian Peninsula (between approximately 40° and 60°N; Figure ; Di Filippo et al, ; Eaton et al, ). For centuries, their woods have been used for timber‐framed building.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Comparisons of the Performance of δ¹³C and δ¹⁸O of Fagus sylvatica, Pinus sylvestris, and Quercus petraea in the Record of Past Climate Variations

et al. 2018

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Climate reconstructions in temperate Europe have been widely based on oak species. However, other co‐occurring species, largely distributed in Europe, may be used for recording climate variability. In this paper, we documented the intertrees and interspecies variations over 1960–2007 of oxygen and carbon isotopic compositions in ring cellulose of Fagus sylvatica, Pinus sylvestris, and Quercus petraea co‐occurring in the Fontainebleau forest (France). Our results indicated that large levels of series replication (11 trees on average) were required to generate isotopic mean series representative of the populations. We calculated mean isotopic ratios higher in pine than in the deciduous species and hypothesized that these contrasts resulted from differences in stomatal conductance, phenology, and canopy structure and, for oxygen, also in water uptake depth and isotopic exchange rate. We found that δ18O and δ13C chronologies were significantly correlated to one another in the three species and responded primarily to air moisture and Tmax, which indicated that stomatal conductance was an important driver of changes in both types of records. We determined that the correlations were strong with the May to July climate variables in F. sylvatica and with the July and August ones in Q. petraea and P. sylvestris. We showed that the oxygen records were systematically more coherent than those of carbon. This study demonstrated that δ18O, and to a lesser extent δ13C, from the three different species are reliable proxies for reconstructing past hydroclimatic variations in Europe.

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“…In particular, positive growth trends may be the result of the slow-grower survivorship bias (Brienen et al, 2012). This bias arises due to differences in longevity between fast-and slow-growing trees with fast growers maturing and dying faster (Black et al, 2008;Bigler & Veblen, 2009;Di Filippo et al, 2015). The result of this is a spurious lack of fast growth rates over earlier parts of tree ring records.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tree demography dominates long‐term growth trends inferred from tree rings

Brienen

Gloor

Ziv

2016

Global Change Biology

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Understanding responses of forests to increasing CO 2 and temperature is an important challenge, but no easy task. Tree rings are increasingly used to study such responses. In a recent study, van der Sleen et al. (2014) Nature Geoscience, 8, 4 used tree rings from 12 tropical tree species and find that despite increases in intrinsic water use efficiency, no growth stimulation is observed. This challenges the idea that increasing CO 2 would stimulate growth. Unfortunately, tree ring analysis can be plagued by biases, resulting in spurious growth trends. While their study evaluated several biases, it does not account for all. In particular, one bias may have seriously affected their results. Several of the species have recruitment patterns, which are not uniform, but clustered around one specific year. This results in spurious negative growth trends if growth rates are calculated in fixed size classes, as 'fast-growing' trees reach the sampling diameter earlier compared to slow growers and thus fast growth rates tend to have earlier calendar dates. We assessed the effect of this 'nonuniform age bias' on observed growth trends and find that van der Sleen's conclusions of a lack of growth stimulation do not hold. Growth trends are -at least partially -driven by underlying recruitment or age distributions. Species with more clustered age distributions show more negative growth trends, and simulations to estimate the effect of species' age distributions show growth trends close to those observed. Re-evaluation of the growth data and correction for the bias result in significant positive growth trends of 1-2% per decade for the full period, and 3-7% since 1950. These observations, however, should be taken cautiously as multiple biases affect these trend estimates. In all, our results highlight that tree ring studies of long-term growth trends can be strongly influenced by biases if demographic processes are not carefully accounted for.

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The longevity of broadleaf deciduous trees in Northern Hemisphere temperate forests: insights from tree-ring series

Abstract: The longevity of broadleaf deciduous trees in Northern Hemisphere temperate forests: insights from tree-ring series.

Cited by 77 publications

References 77 publications

Tree ring‐based metrics for assessing old‐growth forest naturalness

Tree ring‐based metrics for assessing old‐growth forest naturalness

Comparisons of the Performance of δ¹³C and δ¹⁸O of Fagus sylvatica, Pinus sylvestris, and Quercus petraea in the Record of Past Climate Variations

Tree demography dominates long‐term growth trends inferred from tree rings

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The longevity of broadleaf deciduous trees in Northern Hemisphere temperate forests: insights from tree-ring series

Abstract: The longevity of broadleaf deciduous trees in Northern Hemisphere temperate forests: insights from tree-ring series.

Cited by 77 publications

References 77 publications

Tree ring‐based metrics for assessing old‐growth forest naturalness

Tree ring‐based metrics for assessing old‐growth forest naturalness

Comparisons of the Performance of δ13C and δ18O of Fagus sylvatica, Pinus sylvestris, and Quercus petraea in the Record of Past Climate Variations

Tree demography dominates long‐term growth trends inferred from tree rings

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Comparisons of the Performance of δ¹³C and δ¹⁸O of Fagus sylvatica, Pinus sylvestris, and Quercus petraea in the Record of Past Climate Variations