Wood Anatomy

Wood anatomy is the study on the micro- as well as macrostructure of wood cells to understand their features from a biological and physical point of view. This scientific knowledge can supply many additional possibilities to ‘dendrochronology’ beyond total ring width to extract environmental signals archived in tree rings and their cells. Since a tree ring results from the total amount of woody cells formed during a growing season and its width integrates all influences which might vary throughout the vegetation season, using wood anatomy allows analyses at higher temporal resolution.

In our lab DendroGreif, we work with wood anatomical features of coniferous and deciduous species, such as cell size, lumen area and diameter, and cell-wall thickness. These measurement data sets are used for establishing their own inter-annual chronologies (cell-component chronologies). We then use these cell-component chronologies to investigate their archived different environmental signals.

To improve our understanding about the dynamics of wood formation during a growing season (intra-annual dynamics), we also investigate xylogenesis by collecting microsamples from stems in short intervals.