Research Interests
My research interests revolve around tropical dendrochronology. Dendrochronology, or the study of tree rings, is a powerful tool to reconstruct past climate change, but is also extremely valuable when studying forest productivity, carbon sequestration and vegetation dynamics. While annual tree rings are common in temperate and arid climate regions, tropical trees do often not exhibit wood anatomical ring boundaries. If ring boundaries are present, they are not necessarily annual and even if annual rings are present, the ring width does not always display a strong correlation with climate. The difficulties associated with tropical trees does, however, not prevent us from applying the science of dendrochronology. However, new techniques and methods need to be developed.
One of those techniques is to use high resolution signals. Trees that have a continuous (not necessarily constant) growth do not develop a growth ring boundary. However, seasonal changes in rainfall can be detected using a high resolution (e.g. monthly) approach. Vessel frequency and stable isotopic composition measured at high resolution in the wood of Kenyan mangrove trees showed clear annual cycles. These techniques can offer a valuable method to extract environmental/climatic information from tropical trees that do not exhibit distinct growth ring boundaries.

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