title: Distilling allometric and environmental information from time series of conduit size: the standardization issue and its relationship to tree hydraulic architecture.
abstract: Trees are among the best natural archives of past environmental information. Xylem anatomy preserves information related to tree allometry and ecophysiological performance, which is not available from the more customary ring-width or wood-density proxy parameters. Recent technological advances make tree-ring anatomy very attractive because time frames of many centuries can now be covered. This calls for the proper treatment of time series of xylem anatomical attributes. In this article, we synthesize current knowledge on the biophysical and physiological mechanisms influencing the short- to long-term variation in the most widely used wood-anatomical feature, namely conduit size. We also clarify the strong mechanistic link between conduit-lumen size, tree hydraulic architecture and height growth. Among the key consequences of these biophysical constraints is the pervasive, increasing trend of conduit size during ontogeny. Such knowledge is required to process time series of anatomical parameters correctly in order to obtain the information of interest. An appropriate standardization procedure is fundamental when analysing long tree-ring-related chronologies. When dealing with wood-anatomical parameters, this is even more critical. Only an interdisciplinary approach involving ecophysiology, wood anatomy and dendrochronology will help to distill the valuable information about tree height growth and past environmental variability correctly.
authors.affiliation: Università degli Studi di Padova-Dip. TeSAF, Agripolis, I-35020 Legnaro (PD), Padova, Italy marco.carrer@unipd.it.
authors.forename: Marco
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Carrer
authors.affiliation: Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL, Birmensdorf, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Georg
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: von Arx
authors.affiliation: Università degli Studi di Padova-Dip. TeSAF, Agripolis, I-35020 Legnaro (PD), Padova, Italy.
authors.forename: Daniele
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Castagneri
authors.affiliation: Università degli Studi di Padova-Dip. TeSAF, Agripolis, I-35020 Legnaro (PD), Padova, Italy.
authors.forename: Giai
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Petit
mesh_terms: D002980:Climate; D004777:Environment; D010507:Periodicity; D014197:Trees / Q000254:growth & development* / Q000502:physiology; D052584:Xylem / Q000254:growth & development* / Q000502:physiology
keywords: cell chronology; dendrochronology; signal versus noise; tree-ring anatomy; wood anatomy; xylem hydraulic response