Meta-analysis of dendrochronological dating of mass movements

Abstract

Absolute dating of mass movements is crucial for disentangling possible release factors and determining the frequency of events. Here, we present an overview of a recent approach to dendrochronological dating of rockfalls, flows, landslides and avalanches. The results, based on 69 casestudies, show that methodological approaches to sampling and material processing differ considerably for different types of mass movements. Landslides are usually detected through abrupt growth changes and changes in stem eccentricity, whereas high-energy events as avalanches and flows are mostly identified by the formation of traumatic resin ducts, reaction wood, growth injuries and eccentricity changes. Cross-dating of dead wood is applicable as well. The dating of most mass movements except landslides is common, even with sub-annual resolution. In comparison to other methods of absolute dating, the main benefit of dendrochronology still lies in the high temporal resolution of the results. If living material is accessible, on-going research progress makes absolute dating of most mass-wasting events possible with sub-annual precision.

Changes in the radial growth of trees in relation to biogeomorphic processes in an old‐growth forest on flysch, Czechia

“…Deciduous trees generally produce tension wood as well as eccentric tree rings in the upslope direction, while conifers produce compression wood in the downslope direction (Pallardy, 2008). Unfortunately, tension wood is hard to recognize at the macroscopic level (Tumajer and Treml, 2013). Therefore, studies dealing with active hillslope processes focus on eccentricity primarily in the directions in which the eccentricity is expected to be found based on the studied species (e.g.…”

“…Jones et al ., 1994; Jones, 2012). However, the effects of individual parts of the system are rarely unidirectional, and the existence of many feedbacks complicates the system (Elling et al ., 2009; Tumajer and Treml, 2013; Altman et al ., 2017; Trouillier et al ., 2019). Such ecosystem complexity typically results in different responses of equally sized trees to the same external factors or – inversely – analogous responses of trees of very different dimensions to other factors.…”

Tree-Ring Based Chronology of Landslides in the Shirakami Mountains, Japan

“…Dendrogeomorphological studies of landslides have been performed using conifers in the European Alps and Americas [5,8,12]. In North America, Carrara [13] identified synchronous abrupt reductions in annual ring width in tree samples.…”

Debris-flow activity in five adjacent gullies in a limestone mountain range

“…Information on long-term torrential activity is only rarely available. Apart from archival data, dendrogeomorphology has often been used to derive temporal and spatial information of previous debris-flow activity (Alestalo, 1971;Strunk, 1992;Baumann and Kaiser, 1999;Jakob, 2010;Šilhán, 2012;Tumajer and Treml, 2013;Stoffel and Corona, 2014). Hereby investigations of growth failures in year rings of trees affected by debris-flows, allowing deduction of information on past events (Hupp, 1984;Strunk, 1991) is combined with information on the spatial distribution of the affected trees to estimate deposition areas of past debris-flows (Bollschweiler and Stoffel, 2007;.…”