A Band Model of Cambium Development: Opportunities and Prospects
More than 60% of tree phytomass is concentrated in stem wood, which is the result of periodic activity of the cambium. Nevertheless, there are few attempts to quantitatively describe cambium dynamics. In this study, we develop a state-of-the-art band model of cambium development, based on the kinetic heterogeneity of the cambial zone and the connectivity of the cell structure. The model describes seasonal cambium development based on an exponential function under climate forcing which can be effectively used to estimate the seasonal cell production for individual trees. It was shown that the model is able to simulate different cell production for fast-, middle- and slow-growing trees under …
Ecological and conceptual consequences of Arctic pollution
Although the effect of pollution on forest health and decline received much attention in the 1980s, it has not been considered to explain the ‘Divergence Problem’ in dendroclimatology; a decoupling of tree growth from rising air temperatures since the 1970s. Here we use physical and biogeochemical measurements of hundreds of living and dead conifers to reconstruct the impact of heavy industrialisation around Norilsk in northern Siberia. Moreover, we develop a forward model with surface irradiance forcing to quantify long‐distance effects of anthropogenic emissions on the functioning and productivity of Siberia’s taiga. Downwind from the world’s most polluted Arctic region, tree mortality ra…
Arctic aerosols and the ‘Divergence Problem’ in dendroclimatology
Considering the importance and complexity of natural (e.g., volcanic eruptions and wildfires) and anthropogenic (e.g., mining, oil and shipping industries) aerosol emissions to Arctic warming is particularly timely given the recent temperature extremes recorded at high-northern latitudes (Cohen et al., 2020; Overland and Wang, 2021). Despite our knowledge about the observed and modelled climatic effects of rising Arctic aerosol concentrations (Schmale et al., 2021), which may exhibit regional and seasonal differences and call for diverse research priorities from local to circumpolar scales, we feel that the ecological consequences of an aerosol-induced reduction in surface irradiance (i.e.,…