Bannister 110

Tree rings go global: the use of large networks in environmental change research

A major goal of current environmental change research is to add more realism to projections of ecosystem functioning in a warming world. This requires a large-scale understanding of plant responses to climate variability and change. Forests in particular are a major player in the coupled biosphere-climate system and critically determine terrestrial carbon cycling. Studying tree growth on multiple spatiotemporal scales is thus a prerequisite to develop robust benchmarks e.g. for vegetation model simulations of forest productivity.

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Longitudinal Variation in Wood Accumulation Along the Stem of Populus grandidentata: Implications for Forest Carbon Monitoring

Direct measures of forest wood production are often based on measures of individual tree growth along the stem, often taken at a single height: basal height (1.3 meters). This assumes that a measurement of wood production at a single height is representative of wood production along the whole stem. In violation of this assumption, it is known that trees do accumulate wood differentially along the stem.

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A Tree-Ring Perspective on the Impact of Climate Change on North American Tree Growth

The fate of forests in a warming world is of major ecological, societal, and economic concern. Forests play a key role in the combined carbon-water-nutrient cycle, including important ecosystem services and feedbacks to the climate system. Historically, forests have been an important carbon sink because of an excess of net primary production (NPP) compared to ecosystem respiration, but the future of this carbon sink is increasingly in question, as NPP may decline in a warming world.

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Archaeology of Central Kazakhstan: Recent Improvement of Chronology Empowers Studies of Eurasian Steppe Prehistory

Kazakh archaeologist Emma Usmanova has been studying Bronze Age prehistory of the Eurasian Steppe and making significant contributions to comprehensive understanding of population dynamics and cultural evolution of the Steppe for the last 30 years. The first part of this talk is focused on the impact of absolute dating on the development of multidisciplinary research at the Lisakovsky archaeological complex, the key site of the Andronovo community in Kazakh grasslands.