A collection of functions to determine annual tree carbon increment via stem-analysis

Abstract

-Stem analysis process is commonly employed in a wide range of applications of forest importance. We developed a program to compute stem increments in terms of volume, biomass and carbon storage. The stem-analysis process involves the felling of the tree, the extraction of a number of cross-sections from the stem and the measuring of ring-width series on each section. The synchronization of ringwidth series provides a number of tree-and stand-related measures including stem growth pattern, diameter at breast height and tree height growth trend, site-index assessment, timber-quality assessment. Relevant features of the program include: (i) tables and charts can be handled in the "R" environment or exported to any spreadsheet program; (ii) algorithms are independent from the ring width measuring device; (iii) the computation of stem volume, yearly-and mean volume increment is provided as well as the lateral surface area, stem carbon pool, its yearlyand mean increment and associated measurement errors. Forest biomass destructive surveys can usefully apply stem-analysis techniques in order to assess forest past carbon increment trend and set up the basis for non-destructive future carbon surveys. stem analysis / carbon pool / annual carbon increment / error budget / R

Growing stock-based assessment of the carbon stock in the Belgian forest biomass

“…This result confirms the study of Bascietto and Scarascia-Mugnozza [7], who found that the major contributor to carbon increment error was the variability of the wood density measures, and not the variation in carbon content. In total, we selected 174 wood density values from the literature.…”

“…[7,9,18,41]. Conversion factors are used to calculate amounts of dry mass (t DM) from information on the volume (m 3 ), or to convert dry mass (t DM) into carbon stock (t C).…”

Climate change and oak growth decline: Dendroecology and stand productivity of a Turkey oak (Quercus cerris L.) old stored coppice in Central Italy

“…The four crossdated radii, whose dating was checked by standard dendrochronological techniques (Stokes and Smiley, 1996), were averaged to form a mean disk tree-ring series. All mean disk series of a stem, representative of radial growth at different heights along the stem, were used to calculate the annual stem volume increment using the package "tReeglia" (Bascietto and Scarascia Mugnozza, 2004) of the software R (R Development Core Team, 2005). This program interpolates tree heights at different ages using the Carmean algorithm to yield past pseudoannual estimates of tree height.…”

Biometric assessment of aboveground carbon pools and fluxes in three European forests by Randomized Branch Sampling

“…Time series were averaged into a mean stand chronology and synchrony was checked by means of the Gleichläufigkeit (sign test) (Kaennel and Schweingruber, 1995) and Student's t-test, to test the significance of the Gleichläufigkeit value being greater than 50%. Stem analysis was performed on each stem, using the Treeglia program (Bascietto and Scarascia-Mugnozza, 2004) to obtain stem historical trend of carbon pools, fluxes and lateral surface area. Tree age was measured as the age of the innermost ring of the stump-height cross-section.…”