A comparison of times series approaches for dendroecological reconstructions of past canopy disturbance events

Time series analysis can identify outliers in tree-ring widths that may not only indicate past disturbances, but may also estimate the subsequent effects of these disturbances on tree growth. Finding a way to isolate these disturbance signals from tree-ring time series could have broad applications in forest ecology and management. Time series outliers may be expressed as pulse, step, or trend interventions, but few dendroecological studies have explored how well these different types of interventions express the response of tree-ring widths to a canopy disturbance resulting in a release event. This study addresses that question by comparing two different time series approaches for detecting release events: a pulse intervention approach and a new combined step and trend (CST) intervention approach. These methods are tested against tree-ring collections with known historical canopy disturbance events: northern red oaks (Quercus rubra) in New York released by the chestnut blight during the early 1920s, eastern hemlocks (Tsuga canadensis) in Pennsylvania released by adjacent selective logging in 1910, and northern red oaks and chestnut oaks (Quercus montana) in West Virginia released through an experimental thinning in 1982. Clusters of CST interventions, but not pulse interventions, were detected for all three collections during and immediately after the known disturbance events, showing that a CST intervention approach consistently reconstructs these release events. In addition, a CST intervention approach isolated canopy disturbance signals from tree-ring widths as disturbance-growth indices. Detrending disturbances from tree-ring widths provides an alternative approach to reconstruct climate in closed-canopy forests; however, just as importantly, disturbance-growth indices created through this method can also reconstruct changes in tree growth rates, biomass, or carbon resulting from a past disturbance event or forest thinning

Assessing Temperate Forest Growth and Climate Sensitivity in Response to a Long-Term Whole-Watershed Acidification Experiment

Acid deposition is a major biogeochemical driver in forest ecosystems, but the impacts of long-term changes in deposition on forest productivity remain unclear. Using a combination of tree ring and forest inventory data, we examined tree growth and climate sensitivity in response to 26 years of whole-watershed ammonium sulfate ((NH4)2SO4) additions at the Fernow Experimental Forest (West Virginia, USA). Linear mixed effects models revealed species-specific responses to both treatment and hydroclimate variables. When controlling for environmental covariates, growth of northern red oak (Quercus rubra), red maple (Acer rubrum), and tulip poplar (Liriodendron tulipifera) was greater (40%, 52%, and 42%, respectively) in the control watershed compared to the treated watershed, but there was no difference in black cherry (Prunus serotina). Stem growth was generally positively associated with growing season water availability and spring temperature and negatively associated with vapor pressure deficit. Sensitivity of northern red oak, red maple, and tulip poplar growth to water availability was greater in the control watershed, suggesting that acidification treatment has altered tree response to climate. Results indicate that chronic acid deposition may reduce both forest growth and climate sensitivity, with potentially significant implications for forest carbon and water cycling in deposition-affected regions

Influence of sampling and disturbance history on climatic sensitivity of temperature-limited conifers

The study was supported by the institutional project MSMT (CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/16_019/0000803) and the Czech Ministry of Education (Project INTER-COST No. LCT17055).Accurately capturing medium- to low-frequency trends in tree-ring data is vital to assessing climatic response and developing robust reconstructions of past climate. Non-climatic disturbance can affect growth trends in tree-ring-width (RW) series and bias climate information obtained from such records. It is important to develop suitable strategies to ensure the development of chronologies that minimize these medium- to low-frequency biases. By performing high density sampling (760 trees) over a ~40-ha natural high-elevation Norway spruce (Picea abies) stand in the Romanian Carpathians, this study assessed the suitability of several sampling strategies for developing chronologies with an optimal climate signal for dendroclimatic purposes. There was a roughly equal probability for chronologies (40 samples each) to express a reasonable (r = 0.3?0.5) to non-existent climate signal. While showing a strong high-frequency response, older/larger trees expressed the weakest overall temperature signal. Although random sampling yielded the most consistent climate signal in all sub-chronologies, the outcome was still sub-optimal. Alternative strategies to optimize the climate signal, including very high replication and principal components analysis, were also unable to minimize this disturbance bias and produce chronologies adequately representing climatic trends, indicating that larger scale disturbances can produce synchronous pervasive disturbance trends that affect a large part of a sampled population. The Curve Intervention Detection (CID) method, used to identify and reduce the influence of disturbance trends in the RW chronologies, considerably improved climate signal representation (from r = 0.28 before correction to r = 0.41 after correction for the full 760 sample chronology over 1909?2009) and represents a potentially important new approach for assessing disturbance impacts on RW chronologies. Blue intensity (BI) also shows promise as a climatically more sensitive variable which, unlike RW, does not appear significantly affected by disturbance. We recommend that studies utilizing RW chronologies to investigate medium- to long-term climatic trends also assess disturbance impact on those series.PostprintPeer reviewe

Reconstructing 800 years of summer temperatures in Scotland from tree rings

We thank The Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland for providing funding for Miloš Rydval’s PhD. The Scottish pine network expansion has been an ongoing task since 2007 and funding must be acknowledged to the following projects: EU project ‘Millennium’ (017008-2), Leverhulme Trust project ‘RELiC: Reconstructing 8000 years of Environmental and Landscape change in the Cairngorms (F/00 268/BG)’ and the NERC project ‘SCOT2K: Reconstructing 2000 years of Scottish climate from tree rings (NE/K003097/1)’.This study presents a summer temperature reconstruction using Scots pine tree-ring chronologies for Scotland allowing the placement of current regional temperature changes in a longer-term context. ‘Living-tree’ chronologies were extended using ’subfossil’ samples extracted from nearshore lake sediments resulting in a composite chronology > 800 years in length. The North Cairngorms (NCAIRN) reconstruction was developed from a set of composite blue intensity high-pass and ring-width low-pass chronologies with a range of detrending and disturbance correction procedures. Calibration against July-August mean temperature explains 56.4% of the instrumental data variance over 1866-2009 and is well verified. Spatial correlations reveal strong coherence with temperatures over the British Isles, parts of western Europe, southern Scandinavia and northern parts of the Iberian Peninsula. NCAIRN suggests that the recent summer-time warming in Scotland is likely not unique when compared to multi-decadal warm periods observed in the 1300s, 1500s, and 1730s, although trends before the mid-16th century should be interpreted with some caution due to greater uncertainty. Prominent cold periods were identified from the 16th century until the early 1800s – agreeing with the so-called Little Ice Age observed in other tree-ring reconstructions from Europe - with the 1690s identified as the coldest decade in the record. The reconstruction shows a significant cooling response one year following volcanic eruptions although this result is sensitive to the datasets used to identify such events. In fact, the extreme cold (and warm) years observed in NCAIRN appear more related to internal forcing of the summer North Atlantic Oscillation.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Spatial pattern and process in forest stands within the Virginia piedmont

Question: Underlying ecological processes have often been inferred from the analysis of spatial patterns in ecosystems. Using an individual-based model, we evaluate whether basic assumptions of species' life-history, drought-susceptibility, and shade tolerance generate dynamics that replicate patterns between and within forest stands. Location: Virginia piedmont, USA. Method: Model verification examines the transition in forest composition and stand structure between mesic, intermediate and xeric sites. At each site, tree location, diameter, and status were recorded in square plots ranging from 0.25 to 1.0 ha. Model validation examines the simulated spatial pattern of individual trees at scales of 1-25 m within each forest site using a univariate Ripley's K function. Results: 7512 live and dead trees were surveyed across all sites. All sites exhibit a consistent, significant shift in pattern for live trees by size, progressing from a clumped understorey (trees ≥ 0.1 m in diameter) to a uniform overstorey (trees > 0.25 m). Simulation results reflect not only the general shift in pattern of trees at appropriate scales within sites, but also the general transition in species composition and stand structure between sites. Conclusions: This shift has been observed in other forest ecosystems and interpreted as a result of competition; however, this hypothesis has seldom been evaluated using simulation models. These results support the hypothesis that forest pattern in the Virginia piedmont results from competition involving species' life-history attributes driven by soil moisture availability between sites and light availability within sites

Detection and removal of disturbance trends in tree-ring series for dendroclimatology

Non-climatic disturbance events are an integral element in the history of forests. While the identification of the occurrence and duration of such events may help to understand environmental history and landscape change, from a dendroclimatic perspective, disturbance can obscure the climate signal in tree rings. However, existing detrending methods are unable to remove disturbance trends without affecting the retention of long-term climate trends. Here we address this issue by using a novel method for the detection and removal of disturbance events in tree-ring width data to assess their spatiotemporal occurrence in a network of Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) trees from Scotland. Disturbance trends ‘superimposed’ on the tree-ring record are removed before detrending and the climate signals in the pre-correction and post-correction chronologies are evaluated using regional climate data, proxy system model simulations, and maximum latewood density (MXD) data. Analysis of sub-regional chronologies from the West Highlands and the Cairngorms in the east reveals a higher intensity and more systematic disturbance history in the western sub-region, likely a result of extensive timber exploitation. The method improves the climate signal in the two sub-regional chronologies, particularly in the more disturbed western sites. Our application of this method demonstrates that it is possible to minimise the effects of disturbance in tree-ring width chronologies in order to enhance the climate signal.The accepted manuscript in pdf format is listed with the files at the bottom of this page. The presentation of the authors' names and (or) special characters in the title of the manuscript may differ slightly between what is listed on this page and what is listed in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript; that in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript is what was submitted by the author

Testing the efficacy of tree-ring methods for detecting past disturbances

ISSN:0378-1127ISSN:1872-704

Testing the efficacy of tree-ring methods for detecting past disturbances

The retrospective study of abrupt and sustained increases in the radial growth of trees (hereinafter 'releases') by tree-ring analysis is an approach widely used for reconstructing past forest disturbances. Despite the range of dendrochronological methods used for release-detection, a lack of in-depth comparison between them can lead researchers to question which method to use and, potentially, increases the uncertainties of disturbance histories derived with different methods. Here, we investigate the efficacy and sensitivity of four widely used release detection methods using tree-ring width series and complete long-term inventories of forest stands with known disturbances. We used support vector machine (SVM) analysis trained on long-term forest census data to estimate the likelihood that Acer rubrum trees experiencing reductions in competition show releases in their tree-ring widths. We compare methods performance at the tree and stand level, followed by evaluation of method sensitivity to changes in their parameters and settings. Disturbance detection methods agreed with 60-76% of the SVM-identified growth releases under high canopy disturbance and 80-94% in a forest with canopy disturbance of low severity and frequency. The median competition index change (CIC) of trees identified as being released differed more than twofold between methods, from −0.33 (radial-growth averaging) to −0.68 (time-series). False positives (type I error) were more common in forests with low severity disturbance, whereas false negatives (type II error) occurred more often in forests with high severity disturbance. Sensitivity analysis indicated that reductions of the detection threshold and the length of the time window significantly increased detected stand-level disturbance severity across all methods. Radial-growth averaging and absolute-increase methods had lower levels of type I and II error in detecting disturbance events with our datasets. Parameter settings play a key role in the accuracy of reconstructing disturbance history regardless of the method. Time-series and radial-growth averaging methods require the least amount of a priori information, but only the time-series method quantified the subsequent growth increment related to a reduction in competition. Finally, we recommend yearly binning of releases using a kernel density estimation function to identify local maxima indicating disturbance. Kernel density estimation improves reconstructions of forest history and, thus, will further our understanding of past forest dynamics