Tree-Ring Talk

What did I do this summer? LTRR Brown Bag and semester kick-off lunch

Jiri Dolezal Talk

Introduction of dendrochronology to the study of archaeological timber and built heritage in Portugal

“Invisible Woods” is an interdisciplinary project involving ecologists, archaeologists, art historians, engineers, and architects. The challenge is to engage these different mindsets and converging that knowledge to the dendrochronological process and use it for study and examination of timbers preserved in historic buildings and archaeological sites, including rescue operations.

Understanding growth performance of European oaks towards their distribution boundary to the Mediterranean region: A combination of dendrochronology, quantitative wood anatomy, and xylogenesis

Oaks are keystone species in European temperate forests. Nemoral oaks (Quercus robur, Q. petraea) are widespread all throughout the continent, but reach their southern distribution boundary in northern Iberia. In the Mediterranean Region, they are replaced by evergreen oaks, but ‘sub-Mediterranean oaks’, i.e., drought-resistant deciduous oaks with marcescent leaf habit usually occur at the transition areas. But according to prediction models, climate change is expected to modify the future distribution areas of these species.

Winds above as seen by plants below

Temperature sensitivity shift on tree growth at the Northern Hemisphere’s highest tree line: What European larch has to tell in the Alps

Does global warming increase or decrease tree growth at the alpine tree line?

Accounting for non-stationarity when analyzing ecological time series

Increasingly studies highlight the non-stationary features of population dynamics. For instance, recent studies have shown that population dynamics can switch between different dynamics at multi-decadal scales, triggered by small environmental changes. These regime shifts were observed in different regions for different species. Transient behaviors in population dynamics have also been documented in epidemiology. Long-term changes in climate, human demography and/or social features of human populations have considerable effects on the dynamics of numerous epidemics.

Forests, Carbon, and Climate: can we use the past to predict the future?

Millennial–length tree–ring records: A basis for climate reconstruction an assessment of climate extremes and trends at local to global scales

(Multi-) proxy temperature reconstructions over the Common Era are crucial not only to place current temperature trends in a long-term context, but also to assess the full range of natural and anthropogenic climate forcings. However, estimates of the first millennium remain poorly constrained due to a paucity of millennial long tree-ring records causing a spatial under-representation of some regions in larger scale climate reconstructions and increasing uncertainty in the interpretation of climatic trends and extremes.

Population dynamics in a changing world: The consequences of environmental variation for species with complex life histories

Population dynamics in a changing world: the consequences of environmental variation for species with complex life histories Despite increasing awareness of the importance of environmental variation in ecological systems, there are still many open questions about how variation affects population dynamics. I studied several aspects of environmental variation and the roles it plays in population dynamics, particularly for species with complex life histories: (1) How do the the effects of native insect herbivores on the population dynamics of an invasive thistle vary across space?

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