Giovanna Battipaglia

• Doctor of Philosophy in Implementation and application of isotopic methodologies in environmental science research
• Full Professor at University of Campania "Luigi Vanvitelli", Italy

Erica arborea (L) is a widespread Mediterranean species, able to cope with water stress and colonize semiarid environments. The eco-physiological plasticity of this species was evaluated by studying plants growing at two sites with different soil moistures on the island of Elba (Italy), through dendrochronological, wood-anatomical analyses and stab...

Tropical forests and woodlands are key components of the global carbon and water cycles. Yet, how climate change affects these biogeochemical cycles is poorly understood because of scarce long-term observations of tropical tree growth. The recent rise in tropical tree-ring studies may help to fill this gap, but a large-scale quantitative analysis o...

Transpiration is a key biogeochemical process, accounting for more than half of the evaporative water fluxes from land to the atmosphere; however, its quantification is still a hot topic. Sap-flux is a commonly used technique to measure the transpiration of individual plants or trees at a high temporal resolution but limited in time and space to th...

Wood taxonomic analyses are a useful tool for reconstructing local woody environments. Typically, the palae-oecological relevance of anthracological remains is assessed through the examination of numerous wood charcoal fragments scattered in sediments, which reflect relatively long periods of occupation. Sampling is conducted through sieving or flo...

Climate change and human activities increased UK forest-fires. Our research investigated arson fire's effect on woodland, focusing on tree growth, physiology and soil changes.

In this study, using a dendrological and isotopic approaches, we investigated the responses to climate of two pure Fagus sylvatica L. stands (Campobraca and Falode) in the southernmost part of the distribution range in southern Italy. The δ 13 C data were used for calculating the intrinsic water use efficiency (iWUE) as a proxy of the balance betwe...

With ongoing global warming, increasing water deficits promote physiological stress on forest ecosystems with negative impacts on tree growth, vitality, and survival. How individual tree species will react to increased drought stress is therefore a key research question to address for carbon accounting and the development of climate change mitigati...

An accurate investigation is needed to determine if the selected location, the tree species, and the applied treatments can support a successful seedling establishment and outplanting performance to ensure the success of large-scale tree-planting initiatives. To shed light on the growth pattern of the trees used in the Green Belt Project plantation...

Quercus ilex L., an evergreen oak species typical of the western and central Mediterranean basin, is facing decline and dieback episodes due to the increase in the severity and frequency of heat waves and drought events. Studying xylogenesis (the wood formation process) is crucial for understanding how trees respond with their secondary growth to e...

Climate change is expected to affect forests’ growth and functioning and to increase their vulnerability to stressors such as prolonged drought and pest outbreaks. Identifying vulnerable forest stands and predicting tree decline is critical for timely management interventions to preserve forests integrity and associated ecosystem services. This stu...

Droughts are becoming more frequent in the Mediterranean forests due to warmer climate and longer periods without precipitation. In the Mediterranean region, cambial activity is mostly determined by water availability and it occurs during favorite seasons. However, a few studies have focused on the seasonal patterns of wood formation (xylogenesis)...

The European beech Fagus sylvatica L. is one of the most important forest species in Europe, and the most abundant one in Italy. It is commonly regarded as a drought sensitive species, and water scarcity and climate change are strongly affecting its productivity. However, there are still few studies and its responses to drought are poorly understoo...

Climate change significantly impacts the survival and growth of forests globally, leading trees to adapt their wood traits in response to climatic stress. In the Mediterranean, characterized by hot, dry summers and mild, rainy autumns, trees often develop intra-annual density fluctuations (IADFs) in tree rings, to optimize water use during favourab...

Drought frequency is increasing in the Mediterranean forests due to warmer climate and longer periods without precipitation. The Holm oak (Quercus ilex L.) is a Mediterranean species that is well adapted to dry environment and it is widely spread in Mediterranean area. Unlike some deciduous trees, this evergreen oak does not have well-defined tree-...

The future performance of the widely abundant European beech (Fagus sylvatica L.) across its ecological amplitude is uncertain. Although beech is considered drought-sensitive and thus negatively affected by drought events, scientific evidence indicating increasing drought vulnerability under climate change on a cross-regional scale remains elusive....

In recent years, several drought events hit Poland, affecting its forests. In Opole, Poland, tons of Pinus sylvestris L. deadwood is removed every year due to drought. Understanding the physiological mechanisms underlying tree vulnerability to drought, and tree responses, is important to develop forest management strategies to face the ongoing clim...

Transpiration accounts for more than a half of the evaporative water fluxes from land. However, several criticalities still exist in its quantification over the whole land surface. Sap-flux measurement is a widespread technique that allows to retrieve data, at a high temporal resolution, for individual plants or trees. Unfortunately, due to practic...

The Mediterranean basin is exposed to a growing risk of forest fires due to recent climate changes, which are increasing their frequency and intensity. Forest fires can profoundly alter the ecological functions of Mediterranean forests, affecting hydrological regulation, resource supply, soil stability and biodiversity conservation. They also cause...

Tree mortality and forest dieback episodes are increasing due to drought and heat stress. Nevertheless, a comprehensive understanding of mechanisms enabling trees to withstand and survive droughts remains lacking. Our study investigated basal area increment (BAI), and δ¹³C-derived intrinsic water-use-efficiency (iWUE), to elucidate beech resilience...

Pinus sylvestris L. is the most common tree species growing in Poland. Trees of this species are considered to be resistant to difficult meteorological conditions; however, in the past decades, many of them have died and been cut down by foresters. The measurements of the annual tree ring width can provide information on how trees respond to drough...

Climate change significantly impacts global forests, leading to tree decline and dieback. To cope with climate change, trees develop several functional traits, such as intra-annual density fluctuations (IADFs) in tree-rings. The formation of these traits facilitates trees to optimize resource allocation, allowing them to withstand periods of stress...

Tree mortality and forest dieback episodes are increasing due to drought and heat stress. Nevertheless, a comprehensive understanding of mechanisms enabling trees to withstand and survive droughts remains lacking. Our study investigated basal area increment (BAI), and δ13C-derived intrinsic water-use-efficiency (iWUE), to elucidate beech resilience...

The Mediterranean basin is an area particularly exposed to fire risk due to its climate and fire-prone vegetation. In recent decades, the frequency and intensity of wildfires increased, leading to negative effects on forests, such as a decrease in tree growth or an increase in tree mortality, producing a relevant loss of carbon sequestration ecosys...

Agroecosystems have a significant impact on planetary sustainability as they affect soil, water, air quality as well as biodiversity. On the other hand, climate change strongly impactrs agro-production, in particular in the Southern Mediterranean areas, where increasing temperatures and decreasing rainfall, together with more frequent extreme event...

Severe droughts limit tree growth and forest productivity worldwide, a phenomenon which is expected to aggravate over the next decades. However, how drought intensity and climatic conditions before and after drought events modulate tree growth resilience remains unclear, especially when considering the range-wide phenotypic variability of a tree sp...

Intra-Annual Density Fluctuations (IADFs) are an important wood functional trait that determine trees’ ability to adapt to climatic changes. Here, we use a large tree-ring database of 11 species from 89 sites across eight European countries, covering a climatic gradient from the Mediterranean to northern Europe, to analyze how climate variations dr...

Citation: D'ambrosio, S.; Zaccariello, L.; Sadiq, S.; D'Albore, M.; Battipaglia, G.; D'Agostino, M.; Battaglia, D.; Schiraldi, C.; Cimini, D.

Lactobacillus rhamnosus is a homofermentative probiotic strain that was previously demonstrated to grow on lignocellulosic-derived raw materials and to convert glucose into L-lactic acid (LA) with yields that vary between 0.38 and 0.97 g/g. Lactic acid is a key platform chemical, largely applied in different biotechnological fields (spanning from t...

In the Mediterranean region, prolonged droughts affect the growth and reproductive cycles of grapevine. Changes in the physiological processes of grapevine, consequent to variations in environmental factors or cultivation management, are recorded in wood anatomical and isotopic traits in grapevine stems. In this study, we measured the anatomical tr...

In recent decades, forests around the world are facing the effects of progressive climate change. The Mediterranean basin is one of the most affected areas: in this region extreme events, such as drought and heat waves are increasing, with serious consequences for the health state of the forests. These climatic variations influence the duration of...

In the last decades, forests have been seriously threatened by the effects of climate change. In Mediterranean regions, increasing fire occurrence and drought have a substantial impact on forests, possibly pushing them towards tipping points. Indeed, although trees could survive to fire events of medium severity in the short term, severe defoliatio...

Hydrochar, carbon-rich material produced during the thermochemical processing of biomass, is receiving increased attention due to its potential value as soil amendment. It can increase agroforestry systems’ productivity through direct and indirect effects on growth and soil quality. Hydrochar may also directly help mitigate climate change by seques...

The ongoing climate change, with altered precipitation regimes and altered evaporative demand due to the increase in temperature are affecting hydrological conditions in most forest sites in Europe. This change has strong consequences on the distribution, composition and ecological functioning of forest species. Fagus sylvatica is one of the most i...

Over the years, remote sensing and spectroscopy have contributed significantly to vegetation monitoring, primarily to understand the interaction of plants with solar radiation. However, due to spatial and temporal heterogeneity, light availability below and within tree canopies is challenging to estimate or time-consuming. Therefore, it is essentia...

Forest transpiration is an important topic in many environmental sciences fields, such as forestry, forest ecology and hydrology. Many monitoring systems have been developed to measure this variable. Among those, there is the sap flux measurement. The Tree Talkers are devices that have been recently developed for eco-physiological and microenvironm...

The increase in frequency and intensity of wildfires is seriously affecting forest ecosystems, especially in drought-prone areas. Trees’ recovery after fire is related to direct tree damage and is influenced by climate conditions, such as warm temperature and water shortage. In this study, we evaluate the post-fire effects on a Pinus pinaster Aiton...

Tree-ring studies in the Mediterranean Basin and in regions characterized by Mediterranean climates are scarce because of a lack of old trees and difficulties related to the clear identification of individual rings.

In this chapter, we discuss post-photosynthetic processes that affect intra-annual variation in the stable isotopes of tree rings, such as timing of cell formations and turnover of stored carbohydrates, by combining research findings gained by using either natural-abundance or artificially-enriched carbon, oxygenand hydrogen isotopes. We focus on w...

Forest fires are becoming more intense and recurring due to climate change and are increasingly threatening the integrity and functionality of forests worldwide. Trees’ resilience is closely influenced not only by direct fire damages, but also by pre-existing climate stress conditions, such as high temperatures and water deficit. Fire wounds and ex...

Mediterranean forests are currently threatened by the effects of climate change: every year millions of forest hectares burn with severe ecological consequences. Although trees are often able to survive forest fire thanks to their adaptive traits, they may not recover previous conditions due to severe fire wounds. In this research dendrochronology...

Le foreste svolgono un ruolo essenziale nella mitigazione degli effetti del cambiamento climatico e nel mantenimento dei servizi ecosistemici. Tuttavia, disturbi forestali come la siccità e gli incendi influenzano negativamente l’integrità del nostro patrimonio boschivo, causando diffusi eventi di deperimento ed elevati tassi di mortalità. Questi d...

Le foreste rappresentano un elemento chiave degli ecosistemi terrestri, per le loro fondamentali funzioni svolte nei cicli biogeochimici e per i servizi offerti alla popolazione. Negli ultimi decenni, i cambiamenti climatici hanno amplificato gli effetti negativi del clima sulla crescita arborea, soprattutto in ambienti dove lo stress idrico è già...

The mechanistic pathways connecting ocean-atmosphere variability and terrestrial productivity are well-established theoretically, but remain challenging to quantify empirically. Such quantification will greatly improve the assessment and prediction of changes in terrestrial carbon sequestration in response to dynamically induced climatic extremes....

Interannual variability in the global land carbon sink is strongly related to variations in tropical temperature and rainfall. This association suggests an important role for moisture-driven fluctuations in tropical vegetation productivity, but empirical evidence to quantify the responsible ecological processes is missing. Such evidence can be obta...

Agroforestry applications in viticulture are considered a promising strategy to improve vine water status by mitigating the threats of increasing drought due to climate change. The analysis of δ¹³C is often used in viticulture to understand vine water use. In this study, the analysis of δ¹³C was performed on the must of Falanghina grapevines growin...

In this chapter we introduce the climate signal in stable isotope tree-ring records, with the emphasis on temperate forests. The development of the subdiscipline is recapped followed by an exploration of isotope dendroclimatic records by geography and, broadly, by isotopic species. Whilst there are still questions to be answered around signal stren...

Species interactions in mixed plantations can influence tree growth, resources capture and soil fertility of the stands. A combined approach of tree-ring analyses and carbon stable isotope was used to check tree growth and water use efficiency of two species, Populus alba L. and Juglans regia L., intercropped with each other and with N-fixing or co...

In 2010–2018 Northern Patagonia featured the longest severe drought of the last millennium. This extreme dry spell triggered widespread growth decline and forest dieback. Nonetheless, the roles played by the two major mechanisms driving dieback, hydraulic failure and carbon starvation, are still not clear and understudied in this seasonally dry reg...

Key message Juglans, Fraxinus, Quercus and Pinus species seem to better maximize the carbon–water ratio providing useful indications on species selection for forestry plantations in areas with increasing drought risk. Abstract Maximizing carbon sequestration for a given water budget is extremely important in the contest of climate change in the Me...

Tree planting on abandoned agricultural land could both restore the soil quality and increase the productivity of economically valuable woody species. Here, we assess the impact of mixed-species tree plantations on soil quality at a site in Central Italy where tree intercropping systems were established 20 years ago on a former agricultural land. T...

Key message In Abies alba Mill. (silver fir), the frequency of intra-annual density fluctuations (IADFs) increases along the latitudinal transect, from North to South, is higher in pure than in mixed stands, and their formation is linked to spring and/or summer drought conditions. Abstract Trees respond to climate, recording information in tree ri...

Purpose of Review Society is concerned about the long-term condition of the forests. Although a clear definition of forest health is still missing, to evaluate forest health, monitoring efforts in the past 40 years have concentrated on the assessment of tree vitality, trying to estimate tree photosynthesis rates and productivity. Used in monitoring...

Forests play a key role in mitigating greenhouse gases and fighting climate change. However, numerous environmental stressors threaten the integrity and ecological functionalities of forests. In recent decades, the increase of drought events and fires occurrence is negatively influencing forest health, causing dieback events and higher rates of mor...

Surface biomass characterization plays a key role in wildfire management. It allows classifying vegetation fuels flammability for fire risk analysis, to define silvicultural prescriptions for fire hazard reduction, to plan prescribed burning , or to model fire behavior and its effects, such as greenhouse gas and pollutant emissions. To facilitate f...

Over the last decade, several studies have indicated the potential for the δ¹³C isotope signal of charcoals to act as a new local paleoclimatic/paleoenvironmental proxy, complementary to taxonomic analyses. These studies mainly focused on archeological charcoal from the Holocene series, but the potential of the method to be applied Pleistocene sequ...

Atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration ([CO2]) is increasing, which increases leaf‐scale photosynthesis and intrinsic water‐use efficiency. These direct responses have the potential to increase plant growth, vegetation biomass, and soil organic matter; transferring carbon from the atmosphere into terrestrial ecosystems (a carbon sink). A substant...

Recent studies have highlighted that higher species richness can increase the resistance and/or the resilience to disturbances and stresses. The present study quantifies the overall tree species richness effect on growth and intrinsic water-use efficiency (iWUE) in three target tree species (i.e. Fraxinus excelsior, Juglans spp. and Prunus avium) a...

Thinning intensity is an important factor affecting forest structure and density and influencing tree growth. The main objective of the study is to evaluate how the different intensity of thinning can influence, in the short and long term, the productivity and intrinsic water use efficiency (WUEi) of Quercus robur L., a widespread European species....

This study investigated the impacts of environmental (e.g., climate and CO2 level) and ecological (e.g., stand density) factors on the long-term growth and physiology of ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) in a semi-arid north American grassland. We hypothesized that ponderosa pine long-term growth patterns were positively influenced by an increase in...

Climate change is increasingly favouring the occurrence of extreme weather events, affecting species distribution and tree growth. It has been proposed that mixed forests are more resistant to drought spells and heat waves than corresponding monocultures. We sampled tree cores in nine plots along a latitudinal gradient of the Italian Peninsula (Tre...

The article was originally published with duplicate information appearing in the work.

In the Mediterranean Basin, fire incidence has increased dramatically during the past decades and fire is expected to become more severe in the future due to climate change. The effects of fires on forest ecosystems can last several years: the survival of fire-injured trees depend not only on the adaptive traits of individual species, but also on t...

Two simplifying hypotheses have been proposed for whole‐plant respiration. One links respiration to photosynthesis; the other to biomass. Using a first‐principles carbon balance model with a prescribed live woody biomass turnover, applied at a forest research site where multidecadal measurements are available for comparison, we show that if turnove...

Key message Prescribed burning applied after a dry year increased (fall burns) or had no effect (spring burns) on pine resilience, measured as the capacity to reach pre-drought growth levels compared with unburned pines. In fall burns, there was a larger increase in resilience when the impact of drought and burning on pines was low and burning caus...

In this century, one of the main objectives of agriculture is sustainability addressed to achieve food security, based on the improvement of use efficiency of farm resources, the increasing of crop yield and quality, under climate change conditions. The optimization of farm resources, as well as the control of soil degradation processes (e.g., soil...

Research Highlights: Chestnut trees’ (Castanea sativa Mill.) growth and their responses to climate are influenced by stand-characteristics and managements. This study highlighted that chestnut tree-ring growth is not particularly influenced by climate, while minimum temperature showed a positive relation with both intrinsic water-use efficiency (WU...

The ratio of leaf internal (ci) to ambient (ca) partial pressure of CO2, defined here as χ, is an index of adjustments in both leaf stomatal conductance and photosynthetic rate to environmental conditions. Measurements and proxies of this ratio can be used to constrain vegetation model uncertainties for predicting terrestrial carbon uptake and wate...

Gli incendi btoschivi stonto un eventto rictorrente nel bacinto del Mediterraneto e rappresentanto unto dei maggitori fattori di disturbto per le ftoreste. Durante un incendito, il caltore sprigitonatto dalle fiamme determina, diretamente to indiretamente, un trauma termicto nella pianta, che può generare efeti negativi sui prtocessi ectofisitoltog...

Currently, the main goal of agriculture is to support the achievement of food security in a sustainable way through the improvement of use efficiency of farm resources, increasing crop yield and quality, under climate change conditions. Farm resources use improvement, as well as the reduction of soil degradation processes, can be realized by means...

Mediterranean forests are subject to prolonged droughts (Gitlin et al., 2006): the lack of water entails in the plant’s traumatic events (cavitation, carbon starvation, biotic attacks) that can lead to tree mortality (McDowell et al., 2008). An increasing number of ecophysiological studies are currently trying to understand the responses of plants...

An improved understanding of how tree species will respond to warmer conditions and longer droughts requires comparing their responses across different environmental settings and considering a multi-proxy approach. We used several traits (tree-ring width, formation of intra-annual density fluctuations - IADFs, wood anatomy, Δ13C and δ18O records) t...

The occurrence of old-growth forests is quite limited in Mediterranean islands, which have been subject to particularly pronounced human impacts. Little is known about the carbon stocks of such peculiar ecosystems compared with different stages of secondary succession. We investigated the carbon variation in aboveground woody biomass, in litter and...

Two simplifying hypotheses have been proposed for whole-plant respiration. One links respiration to photosynthesis; the other to biomass. Using a first-principles carbon balance model with a prescribed live woody biomass turnover, we show that if turnover is fast, the accumulation of respiring biomass is low and respiration depends primarily on pho...

Treeline shift and tree growth often respond to climatic changes and it is critical to identify and quantify their dynamics. Some regions are particularly sensitive to climate change and the Altai Mountains, located in Central and East Asia, are showing unequivocal signs. The mean annual temperature in the area has increased by 1.3–1.7 °C in the la...

Grapevine is the most widely cultivated fruit crop in the world and Italy is one of the world’s leading wine- producing countries whose vineyards are facing environmental constraints due to climate-change-driven rising temperatures, changes in precipitation frequency and occurrence of extreme events. In this scenario, the use of biostimulants to im...

Mixed-species plantation containing N-fixing species can increase stand productivity maintaining also soil fertility. However, scanty information is related to the best forest management strategies able to guarantee both the enrichment of tree growth and the increase of soil fertility. In this context, our work aim to evaluate the productivity of a...

Forest fires are a critical issue in the Mediterranean basin, increasing their frequency and intensity in the last decades (IPCC 2014). Understanding post-fire responses of trees is a crucial issue in planning forest management actions of burned areas in the short term and fire risk reduction at the medium and long term. This research aims to verif...

This poster shows a brief overview of "Dendrochronological analysis and growth patterns of Polylepis reticulata (Rosaceae in the Ecuadorian Andes" articles, as well as it shows a step by step processing of analysis of tree rings series.