Evaluating the potential of an individual-tree sampling strategy for dendroecological investigations using the Italian National Forest Inventory data

摘要

European National Forest Inventories (NFIs) are well established in most of the European countries. In some NFIs, core samples are taken to estimate volume increments at annual resolution. However, the potential of the NFI for dendroecological investigations has not been evaluated so far. Therefore, the aim of this study was to test the potential of dendrochronological data collected during the Italian NFI in 2006. Silver fir was selected as a test species. Core samples were taken from eighty-one trees including one sample per inventory plot (IP). The 81 IPs were distributed across the Italian Alps and the northern Apennine thus well representing the site conditions of the study area. The effects of the detrending method and sample size on detecting middle- to long-term growth trends and high-frequency climate signals were tested. Further, cluster analysis was applied to find dissimilarities among tree-ring width (TRW) series.