Daniele Castagneri

• Researcher at University of Padua

Shrubland ecosystems cover a large part of the five Mediterranean regions of the world, and monitoring their biomass is crucial for assessing fire risk and carbon sequestration. However, biomass models for multi-stemmed shrubs remain scarce, making the quantitative assessment of shrubland biomass imprecise and often unreliable. Here, we measured, h...

Understanding the complex relationships between climate, forest carbon (C) uptake and biomass growth has become a research priority, crucial for assessing the climate change impacts on forest C sequestration. Such associations are expected to vary across biomes, due to different climate constraints on tree physiology. However , our understanding of...

Forests are major terrestrial carbon (C) sinks and play a crucial role in climate change mitigation. Despite extensive studies on forest C sequestration, the relationship between seasonal C uptake and its allocation to woody biomass is poorly understood. Here we used a novel dendro-anatomical approach to investigate the relationships between climat...

Aim of the study: The aim of this study is to provide information on species-specific basic wood density (g cm-3) and moisture content (%) in Mediterranean shrublands. Area of study: The study covers two sites of the sclerophyllous shrubland in central Chile, Cortaderal (34°35’S 71°29’W) and Miraflores (34°08’S 70°37’W), characterized by different...

Ring porosity, i.e. the distribution of vessel size within the ring of Angiosperms, is generally considered a taxon-specific trait. Ring porosity reflects strategies for tree water transport. However, we don’t know if variable conditions affect these patterns. Is ring porosity a stable trait in Mediterranean oaks, or does climate variability alter...

Drought will increasingly threaten forest ecosystems worldwide. Understanding how competition influences tree growth response to drought is essential for forest management aiming at climate change adaptation. However, published results from individual case studies are heterogeneous and sometimes contradictory. We reviewed 166 cases from the peer-re...

Defoliator insects are a major disturbance agent in many forests worldwide. During outbreaks, they can strongly reduce photosynthetic carbon uptake and impact tree growth. In the Alps, larch budmoth (Zeiraphera diniana) outbreaks affect European larch (Larix decidua) radial growth over several years. However, immediate and legacy effects on xylem f...

Key message Xylem hydraulic traits of native Quercus robur are more sensitive to previous-summer drought than those of alien Robinia pseudoacacia. The latter modulates vessel traits and ring porosity to cope with inter-annual climate variability, and is less affected by extreme events. This suggests that R. pseudoacacia might be more competitive un...

The effects of climate change on high‐latitude forest ecosystems are complex, making forecasts of future scenarios uncertain. The predicted lengthening of the growing season under warming conditions is expected to increase tree growth rates. However, there is evidence of an increasing sensitivity of the boreal forest to drought stress. To assess th...

One of the most evident effects of the rapid warming occurring recently in cold and high-latitude forests is the lengthening of the growing season, with the concurrent extension of the period of wood formation. In addition, the increase of evapotranspiration demand is starting to induce drought-stress conditions. By selecting the same black spruce...

In the Mediterranean basin, diffuse-porous, semi-ring-porous and ring-porous tree species coexist in the same regions. Climate change might differently affect these types, but a mechanistic understanding of drought effects on their xylem structure is lacking. We investigated tree-ring width and xylem functional traits in ring-porous Quercus boissie...

Climate sensitivity of populations at the margins of their distribution range is of key importance to understand species’ responses to future warming conditions. Pinus cembra L. is of particular interest being a typical high-elevation taxon, spread with mostly scattered populations within its actual range, but still overlooked in traditional dendro...

The microsection images were processed with the image analysis software ROXAS (von Arx & Carrer, 2014) that provided the lumen area (LA), cell-wall thickness (CWT), and relative position within the dated annual ring for each tracheid within the dated tree ring.  6 mature larch trees were sampled at the tree-line (about 2200 m a.s.l.) on the southe...

Climate sensitivity of populations at the margins of their distribution range is of key importance to understand species' responses to future warming conditions. Pinus cembra is of particular interest being a typical high-elevation taxon, spread with mostly scattered populations within its actual range, but still overlooked in traditional dendrochr...

Tree-ring and xylogenesis studies have shown that the main environmental driver of wood formation in boreal forests is temperature. Quantitative wood anatomy is a new approach to investigate environmental drivers on tree growth at intra-annual scale. The aim of this research is to explore the possibility of detecting cambial phenology information f...

The Himalayas is one of the most ecologically sensitive and fragile areas in the world. The climate of the region is dominated by the monsoon seasonality, with typical dry winters and abundant summer precipitations. Here, forest vegetation spreads up to the world's highest elevations, where cold temperatures and early spring droughts represent the...

Understanding how climate affects xylem formation is critical for predicting the impact of future conditions on tree growth and functioning in the Mediterranean region, which is expected to face warmer and drier conditions. However, mechanisms of growth response to climate at different temporal scales are still largely unknown, being complicated by...

Under predicted climate change, native silver fir (Abies alba) and European beech (Fagus sylvatica) are the most likely replacement species for the Norway spruce (Picea abies) monocultures planted across large parts of continental Europe. Our current understanding of the adaptation potential of fir-beech mixed forests to climate change is limited b...

Detection of tree spatial patterns and structural attributes in a forest stand can provide critical information on occurring dynamics, and steer management decisions. However, since tree spatial distribution depends on factors that operate at different scales, including environmental heterogeneity and tree-to-tree interactions, both the extent to w...

Verde urbano, cambiamenti climatici, dendrocronologia

Interannual variability of wood density – an important plant functional trait and environmental proxy – in conifers is poorly understood. We therefore explored the anatomical basis of density. We hypothesized that earlywood density is determined by tracheid size and latewood density by wall dimensions, reflecting their different functional tasks. T...

The study of xylogenesis or wood formation is a powerful, yet labor intensive monitoring approach to investigate intra-annual tree growth responses to environmental factors. However, it seldom covers more than a few growing seasons, so is in contrast to the much longer lifespan of woody plants and the time scale of many environmental processes. Her...

Background and Aims During the growing season, the cambium of conifer trees produces successive rows of xylem cells, the tracheids, that sequentially pass through the phases of enlargement and secondary wall thickening before dying and becoming functional. Climate variability can strongly influence the kinetics of morphogenetic processes, eventuall...

Performance and survival of Mediterranean trees depend on their capacity to cope with water stress. In harsh environments, xylem growth strategies are critical to ensure efficient water transport, though these are largely unknown for many species, including most Mediterranean oaks. We investigated xylem anatomical traits in tree-ring series of deci...

Extreme climate events are of key importance for forest ecosystems. However, both the inherent infrequency, stochasticity and multiplicity of extreme climate events, and the array of biological responses, challenges investigations. To cope with the long life cycle of trees and the paucity of the extreme events themselves, our inferences should be b...

Prescribed burning (PB) is a widespread management technique for wildfire hazard abatement. Understanding PB effects on tree ecophysiology is key to defining burn prescriptions aimed at reducing fire hazard in Mediterranean pine plantations, such as Pinus pinea L. stands. We assessed physiological responses of adult P. pinea trees to PB using a com...

Climate change can induce substantial modifications in xylem structure and water transport capacity of trees exposed to environmental constraints. To elucidate mechanisms of xylem plasticity in response to climate, we retrospectively analysed different cell anatomical parameters over tree-ring series in Norway spruce (Picea abies L. Karst.). We sam...

In the inner-Alpine Aosta Valley, severe growth reductions occurred in Scots pine stands during 1987-1993 and 2003-2005. Trees more sensitive to May precipitation exhibited stronger growth decline during these periods. Over the last decades, Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) decline has involved large areas in the European Alps. Although the species...

Understanding prescribed burning effects on tree productivity and on plant ecophysiological responses is of crucial importance to define burn prescriptions aiming at reducing fire hazard in Mediterranean pine plantations, such as Pinus pinea L. stands. In this context, a combination of dendroecological, isotopic and wood-anatomical approaches can b...

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 fra...

Sustainable forest management has to consider the long-term effects of climate change on species growth to develop adaptation measures. In this perspective, dendrochronology provides valuable information on climate-growth relationships over long time periods. Tree-ring analyses in mixed stands can elucidate how different species respond to climate...

Nel sistema normativo italiano esiste un vasto insieme di Leggi Nazionali e Regionali, Ordinanze, Provvedimenti, Piani Regionali, Piani delle Aree Protette, Regolamenti, Prescrizioni e altri documenti che disciplinano la materia degli incendi boschivi. Vista l’elevata eterogeneità degli strumenti legislativi e operativi, il presente lavoro intende...

Drought events have become more frequent in the Mediterranean Basin since the 1970s, and natural forest productivity in the northern portion of the basin shows a declining trend. Among European regions, the Mediterranean Basin could be severely affected by climate change linked to global warming in the 21st century, undergoing drier conditions and...

Context Prescribed burning is increasingly recommended to control encroaching shrublands in the Mediterranean area. • Aims The aims of this paper are to analyze the fuel structural characteristics of Spartium junceum and how they influence fire behaviour during prescribed burning. • Methods Two winter–spring prescribed burns were conducted in 2009...

In the Southwestern Alps, the summer heat wave in 2003 was associated with unusually large wildfires in European beech forests, a tree species lacking from fire-specific traits and commonly considered as fire sensitive. Although knowledge regarding post-fire dynamics is a prerequisite for restoration measures, there is a considerable lack of studie...

Old trees represent key features of old-growth forests and are important elements for maintaining biodiversity. Due to extensive human exploitation of Fennoscandian boreal forests during several centuries, old Norway spruce trees have become exceedingly rare. We analysed 91 spruce trees in Trillemarka Nature Reserve, southern Norway, to investigate...

Recent studies have highlighted the role of lianas in shaping stand dynamics both in tropical and temperate forests. However, English ivy (Hedera helix L.), one of the most widespread lianas in Europe, has received little attention. We conducted a study in the Siro Negri alluvial forest (NW Italy) to determine what factors most affected ivy distrib...

In a forest stand, competition plays a central role, affecting individual growth. The size–growth relationship (SGR) indicates whether large trees grow proportionally more than (asymmetric SGR), equal to (symmetric), or less than (inversely asymmetric) smaller trees. SGR is thus an indicator of the growth partitioning and competition intensity with...

Pattern analysis of tree stems in forests stands is commonly used to assess the type and intensity of tree-to-tree interactions. Crowns are directly involved in competition for light, and plastically react by growing asymmetrically. We tested the hypothesis that the spatial pattern of crown centers is different than that of stem bases, and specific...

Knowledge on the range of variability of montane European forests is hampered by limited data on the natural disturbance regime and by the small size of old-growth remnants. We studied the mixed Fagus–Abies–Picea Lom forest reserve (55.8 ha) in Bosnia and Herzegovina at three different scales: a grid of 40 sampling points to describe the structural...

Tree growth depends on an intrinsic component (age, size, genetic structure) and external factors. The radial growth linear aggregate model [Graybill, 1982; Cook, 1990] outlines five classes of variables influencing tree-ring growth: (1) age-size-related trend, (2) climatic influence, (3) autogenic disturbances (plant to plant interactions), (4) al...

Keywords: competition / coarse woody debris (CWD) / stand density index (SDI) / age structure / old-growth Abstract • We studied structural characteristics, amount and quality of coarse woody debris (CWD), intensity of competition and mortality in two subalpine Norway spruce stands withdrawn from regular man-agement. The stands, that we measured tw...

• Understanding tree mortality processes across time requires long term studies. Spatiotemporal patterns of mortality in a 200 years-old mono-layered Norway spruce stand were evaluated to determine what factors affected individual-tree mortality. • We performed an analysis on two surveys (1993 and 2005) in a 1-ha permanent plot in the Paneveggio fo...

The role of deadwood on biodiversity conservation of forest ecosystems is widely recognised. Interest on deadwood has increased in the last years, and forest management policy regards deadwood as indicator of sustainable forest management.This study took place in mixed montane forests in Eastern Italian Alps. The objective was to determine how past...

The Republic of Bosnia Herzegovina is a country relatively rich (2000 ha) of primeval and old-growth forests that are very rare in central and southern Europe. One of the best Bosnian old-growth is located in the forest of Lom where a Forest reserve of 278 ha was established in 1956. Inside this reserve, 1 ha long-term intensive monitoring plot was...

As a consequence of the recent change in human land-use intensity in mountain territories in the Italian Alps, many Norway spruce (Picea abies (L.) Karst.) subalpine forests have recently developed without significant anthropogenic disturbance. Even so, their structure and dynamics are still influenced by past human activity. In order to analyze th...