Isotope Application in Forest Growth Assessment

Dear colleagues

Stable isotopes are valuable sources of information about past climatic and environmental changes, and their impact on forest growth and dynamics. Indeed, understanding the relationship between tree-growth and environmental variability represents a key aspect concerning both forest assessment and plant ecophysiology.

Relevant matters investigated within this special issue will be:

• application of stable and compound-specific isotope analyses (δ¹³C, δ¹⁸O, δ¹⁵N and δD) in wood tissues as sensitive indicators for biogeochemical, eco-physiological and metabolic changes at the tree level;
• forest productivity changes, die-back phenomena and adaptive responses of trees to global change;
• extreme climatic events: impacts and approaches for their reconstruction;
• evaluation of the effects of disturbance and competition over the expression of tree-ring stable isotopes in natural versus managed forests;
• potential application of stable isotopes from the study of hydrological processes to pollution influences;
• application of eco-physiological and mechanistic models to the interpretation and deeper understanding of stable isotope changes at the tree to the forest level

This Special issue aims to stimulate the integration of long‐term (paleo) records and short-term (in vivo) measurements of plant-physiology to improve our understanding of plants’ responses to environmental variability at various timescales (from seasonal to centennial).

Dr. Giovanna Battipaglia
Dr. Olga Churakova (Sidorova)
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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