Unveiling forest ecosystem dynamics: insights into climate change and human impact through tree rings

Tree rings register environmental conditions annually and are valuable evidence for hindcasting climate and extreme events. This research project has three main purposes. (1) Assessing climate and environmental change in three treeline types: elevational (northwestern Himalaya), latitudinal (Iceland) and wet (hydrological) treelines (Estonia). The dendroclimatic analysis will detect responses of different tree species to climate change and the trees’ adaptations to extreme and changing environmental conditions. (2) Determining the spatio-temporal extent of drainage and success of restoration in Estonian peat bogs. (3) Dendrochronological dating of historic timber. Consistent prolonging of tree-ring series will upgrade chronologies of ecologically and economically important tree species. The long chronologies will be used to study pre-instrumental climate and the geography of late medieval Baltic timber trade.