TRACE 2024 – Tree Rings in Archaeology, Climatology and Ecology
the annual meeting and international conference of the Association for Tree-Ring Research (ATR)
BRAȘOV, ROMANIA, 3-8 JUNE 2024
If you are keen to learn or to deepen into diverse tree-rings topics and techniques or on how to deliver effective scientific presentations, then the TRACE 2024 workshops are the place to be! During these workshops you will learn new skills to develop your research career.
You may register for the workshops when you fill in the registration form (see the REGISTRATION FORM & ABSTRACT SUBMISSION section). To do so, just mark the workshop(s) [their date, list and description is provided below … keep on reading] that you are interested in. Every workshop will be limited to 20 participants, so the 'first come first served' rule will be applied in order to attend them. For each of the workshops, a fee will be charged (coffee breaks). Lunch breaks will not be included in this fee … we will go together to a nearby restaurant and each participant will have to pay his/her own lunch separately. The fee / each workshop is provided in the REGISTRATION FEES section.
All the workshops will take place at the Faculty of Silviculture and Forest Engineering of the Transilvania University of Braşov; Address: Sirul Beethoven, nr. 1, corpul "S", 500123 Brasov. If you get lost, just ask for Poarta Ecaterina … we will be there waiting for you.
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MONDAY, 03 of June:
BLUE INTENSITY FOR HISTORICAL DATING: whole day (morning & afternoon) workshop; starting hour to be confirmed
LED BY: Rob Wilson (University of St. Andrews, UK) & Ryszard J. Kaczka (Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic)
REQUIREMENTS: participants need to bring their own laptops (running Windows); Software: CooRecorder/Cdendro suite – a freeware version provided for the workshop.
SUMMARY: Blue Intensity (BI) is as a comparable tree-ring variable to maximum latewood density (MXD) in conifer trees. MXD is the gold standard tree-ring variable for the reconstruction of past summer temperatures and research over the past decade has shown that BI performs very similarly to MXD. Measuring BI rests on the spectral absorption properties of the wood. When latewood ring density is high (i.e. thick cell walls), the intensity of reflectance is low (i.e. darker). BI and MXD therefore measure similar wood properties. Unlike MXD, BI can be measured easily, quickly, and cheaply from digital images of wood samples of various conifer species. Unlike MXD, it is therefore an analytical approach available to all tree-ring laboratories for a modest investment.
Ring-width has been the main tree-ring variable used for historical dating. However, the utilization of BI and stable isotopes provides exciting new possibilities in dendroarchaeology. The BI workshop will introduce both theoretical basics of the BI method, including terminology, and practical aspects of measuring and using it for historical dating. Case study examples will be presented from Scotland and Poland as well as hands on practical experience of measuring and dating some example samples.
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MONDAY, 03 of June:
DIAGNOSING THE TECHNOLOGICAL QUALITY OF WOOD BY MEANS OF TREE RINGS: whole day (morning & afternoon) workshop; starting hour to be confirmed
LED BY: Florin Dinulică & Saboura Rahanjam (Department of Forest Engineering, Forest Management Planning and Terrestrial Measurements, Faculty of Silviculture and Forest Engineering, Transilvania University of Brasov, Brasov, Romania)
REQUIREMENTS: participants must have some basic knowledge about the structure of xylem; as the afternoon session will take place in the field, some basic field gear will be needed (boots, comfortable cloths).
SUMMARY: Tree rings archive a great deal of information about the environment. The size and anatomical architecture of the tree rings determine the physical properties of the wood and, through them, the suitability of the material for certain processing methods and uses. Specifically, the fact that in certain tree species, the tree rings are wider or narrower, contain more or less latewood, have compression wood tracheids or tension wood fibres, have more dense or rare vessels, have changes in the microfibrillar angle, have features of juvenile wood or conversely of adult wood, are part of sapwood or heartwood, influences the suitability of their wood for some products (veneers, boards, wood structures, pulp and paper, furniture, art sculptures, etc.) or yield when obtaining these products.
This workshop is designed in two sessions: Morning - This first session will provide information on the connection between the structure of the tree rings and the behaviour of the wood for industrial processing and during the lifetime of the products in which it is incorporated. The theoretical presentation will be attended by practical applications on the material (wood cores, tree cookies and other wood samples); Afternoon – The second session will take place in the field, where the participants will have the opportunity to understand the connection between the site conditions of the trees and their particular wood structures by analysing wood cores.
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TUESDAY, 04 of June:
DENDRO-STATISTICS: whole day (morning & afternoon) workshop; starting hour to be confirmed
LED BY: Jernej Jevšenak (TUM School of Life Sciences, Technical University of Munich, Germany; Department for Forest and Landscape Planning and Monitoring, Slovenian Forestry Institute, Slovenia) & Ernst van der Maaten (Chair of Forest Growth and Woody Biomass Production, TU Dresden, Tharandt, Germany)
REQUIREMENTS: participants should bring their own laptops and should have at least basic knowledge of the R programming environment; instructions for preparation will be sent to participants a few weeks in advance.
SUMMARY: In the morning session, participants will be familiarised with the dendroTools R package. First, the theoretical background will be presented, while most of the time participants will be working on practical examples. The main focus will be on analysing climate-growth correlations using daily and monthly climate data, assessing temporal stability and comparing tree ring characteristics in extreme years.
As climate-growth relationships calculated over longer periods of time display average relationships between climate and tree growth, but disregard less frequent, time-dependent growth-limiting factors that trees experience in extreme years, the afternoon session will focus on extreme growth responses. More specifically, methods for pointer year detection will be introduced and compared, and components of tree resilience calculated using the R package pointRes.
Overall, the dendro-statistical workshop will provide all tools needed for getting a comprehensive understanding on the climate sensitivity of tree growth.
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TUESDAY, 04 of June:
THE USE OF DENDROMETERS FOR MONITORING INTRA-ANNUAL GROWTH PATTERNS AND DROUGHT STRESS: half day (morning) workshop; starting hour to be confirmed
LED BY: Roberto L. Salomón (Departamento de Sistemas y Recursos Naturales, Research Group FORESCENT, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Jose Antonio Novais 10, 28040, Madrid, Spain) & Antonio Gazol (Instituto Pirenaico de Ecología (IPE-CSIC), Avda. Montañana 1005, E-50192 Zaragoza, Spain)
REQUIREMENTS: participants should bring their own laptops (running Windows). It is also advisable to have R-studio installed on the computer (https://posit.co/download/rstudio-desktop/). The R package treenetproc (https://github.com/treenet/treenetproc) will be used in the workshop.
SUMMARY: Dendrometers are a powerful alternative to investigate intra-annual growth patterns in woody plants. Dendrometer data can be used to infer intra-annual growth dynamics (xylem phenology) and water-related fluctuations in the stem. However, dendrometer measures depend on the type of dendrometer used (e.g. automatic, manual, band or point…), and they need to be appropriately processed to separate irreversible (plastic) growth from reversible (elastic) responses to environmental fluctuations.
In this workshop, we aim at providing an overview of the capacity of dendrometers to monitor growth patterns and detect dehydration in woody plants. Particularly, we will cover the following aspects:
- • Types of dendrometers and their characteristics, focusing on the differences between point and band dendrometers.
- • How to calibrate the dendrometers (if required).
- • An explanation of different measures that can be obtained from dendrometer data paying special attention to seasonal growth dynamics (start, end and duration of the growing season) and water-related fluctuations (tree water deficit) at varying time scales (within and between days).
- • Data processing using the treenetproc package (https://github.com/treenet/treenetproc) in the R environment.
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TUESDAY, 04 of June:
DESIGN AND DELIVER EFFECTIVE SCIENTIFIC PRESENTATIONS: half day (afternoon) workshop; starting hour to be confirmed
LED BY: Alan Crivellaro (Department of Agricultural, Forest and Food Sciences - DISAFA. University of Torino. Largo Paolo Braccini 2, 10095 Grugliasco (TO), Italy)
SUMMARY: This workshop is designed to help students and researchers at any stage of their careers to master effective scientific presentation skills. It will not impose a presentation style, but participants will have the opportunity to think about their presentation style and further develop it towards clarity and efficiency. A friendly environment will be built during the workshop, with supportive and non-judgmental space and time to practice speaking and learn from each other. After the workshop, participants will have tools to help them improve their presentations.
