TY - JOUR
T1 - An investigation of fire scars in Pseudotsuga macrocarpa by Scanning X-Ray Fluorescence Microscopy
AU - Pearson, Charlotte L.
AU - Dale, Darren
AU - Lombardo, Keith
N1 - Funding Information:
Samples used in this study were supplied by the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research, Tucson, where we thank Thomas Swetnam and Chris Baisan. We also thank Mark Borchert of the US Forest Service and Sturt Manning, Director of the Cornell Tree-Ring Laboratory. The Cornell Tree-Ring Laboratory, The Malcolm and Carolyn Wiener Laboratory for Aegean and Near Eastern Dendrochronology is supported by the National Science Foundation, The Malcolm H. Wiener Foundation, Cornell University and the individual patrons of the Aegean Dendrochronology Project. We are particularly grateful to Mary Jaye Bruce, Peter Brewer and Peter Kuniholm for their critical appraisal of the text during various stages of the project, and are indebted to two anonymous referees for substantive improvement of the final text. Funding for Keith Lombardo was provided by the Joint Fire Sciences Program (06-3-1-07). This work is based upon research conducted at CHESS which is supported by the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health/National Institute of General Medical Sciences under NSF award DMR-0936384 . At CHESS we would like to thank Sol Gruner, Arthur Woll, Don Bilderback, and Sterling Cornaby.
PY - 2011/10/1
Y1 - 2011/10/1
N2 - Fire scars in dated sequences of tree-rings are regularly used for the reconstruction of histories of forest fire frequency and investigations of various exogenous factors (climate in particular) which may control such events. The potential of the tree-ring archive in this regard is such that in circumstances where no scarring occurs following a particular fire, or where sampling is limited to increment cores which may miss the zone of scarring, alternate means of detecting tree-ring evidence for fire impact must be sought. One possible alternative may be detection of changes in tree-ring chemistry associated with growth years following forest fires. If it was possible to characterize such a change in chemistry an independent proxy for forest fires in tree-ring series might be established. The behavior of various elements within the xylem is however extremely complex so for a dendrochemical approach to fire history to be established, new techniques are required to enhance existing knowledge of elemental behavior in trees affected by fire. In this study, elemental intensities were mapped across scarred and un-scarred vectors of Pseudotsuga macrocarpa (Vasey) Mayr (bigcone Douglas-fir) tree-rings from a site in the Los Padres National Forest, Southern California, using Scanning X-Ray Fluorescence Microscopy (SXFM). The aims were: to assess the potential of this technique for understanding elemental change in relation to fire scars and undamaged contemporary growth; to provide new information on specific elemental behavior in this species; and to contribute to wider research for dendrochemically establishing fire histories. The results highlight the potential of SXFM for mapping elemental changes associated with compartmentalization, callus and woundwood as well as providing some evidence for depletion of certain elements in contemporary un-scarred rings. They also provide a first step towards future work to use cores for dendrochemical construction of fire histories.
AB - Fire scars in dated sequences of tree-rings are regularly used for the reconstruction of histories of forest fire frequency and investigations of various exogenous factors (climate in particular) which may control such events. The potential of the tree-ring archive in this regard is such that in circumstances where no scarring occurs following a particular fire, or where sampling is limited to increment cores which may miss the zone of scarring, alternate means of detecting tree-ring evidence for fire impact must be sought. One possible alternative may be detection of changes in tree-ring chemistry associated with growth years following forest fires. If it was possible to characterize such a change in chemistry an independent proxy for forest fires in tree-ring series might be established. The behavior of various elements within the xylem is however extremely complex so for a dendrochemical approach to fire history to be established, new techniques are required to enhance existing knowledge of elemental behavior in trees affected by fire. In this study, elemental intensities were mapped across scarred and un-scarred vectors of Pseudotsuga macrocarpa (Vasey) Mayr (bigcone Douglas-fir) tree-rings from a site in the Los Padres National Forest, Southern California, using Scanning X-Ray Fluorescence Microscopy (SXFM). The aims were: to assess the potential of this technique for understanding elemental change in relation to fire scars and undamaged contemporary growth; to provide new information on specific elemental behavior in this species; and to contribute to wider research for dendrochemically establishing fire histories. The results highlight the potential of SXFM for mapping elemental changes associated with compartmentalization, callus and woundwood as well as providing some evidence for depletion of certain elements in contemporary un-scarred rings. They also provide a first step towards future work to use cores for dendrochemical construction of fire histories.
KW - Fire history
KW - Scanning X-Ray Fluorescence Microscopy
KW - Synchrotron
KW - Tree-ring
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=79960588260&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=79960588260&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.foreco.2011.06.023
DO - 10.1016/j.foreco.2011.06.023
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:79960588260
SN - 0378-1127
VL - 262
SP - 1258
EP - 1264
JO - Forest Ecology and Management
JF - Forest Ecology and Management
IS - 7
ER -