Abstract
Wood density is well known to vary between tree species as well as within and between trees of a certain species depending on the growing environment causing uncertainties in forest biomass and carbon storage estimation. This has created a need to develop novel methodologies to obtain wood density information over multiple tree communities, landscapes, and ecoregions. Therefore, the aim of this study was to evaluate the dependencies between structural characteristics of Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) tree communities and internal wood property (i.e., mean wood density and ring width) variations at breast height. Terrestrial laser scanning was used to derive the structural characteristics of even-aged Scots pine dominated forests with varying silvicultural treatments. Pearson’s correlations and linear mixed effect models were used to evaluate the interactions. The results show that varying silvicultural treatments did not have a statistically significant effect on the mean wood density. A notably stronger effect was observed between the structural characteristics and the mean ring width within varying treatments. It can be concluded that single time terrestrial laser scanning is capable of capturing the variability of structural characteristics and their interactions with mean ring width within different silvicultural treatments but not the variation of mean wood density.
Highlights
Wood density of a tree species is widely expressed as a value on basic wood density -tables existing in scientific literature where it is determined as an oven-dry mass per green volume even though it is rather well known to have major variation within and between trees [1]
When compared to the control plots, all treatments resulted in slightly increased variation in RWmean values
All treatments resulted in slightly increased variation in RWmean values compared to control plots
Summary
Wood density of a tree species is widely expressed as a value on basic wood density -tables existing in scientific literature where it is determined as an oven-dry mass per green volume (kg m−3) even though it is rather well known to have major variation within and between trees [1]. Different tree species typically have their unique growth rhythm depending on their need for light (i.e., pioneer or shade tolerant trees), and the plasticity of their crowns [3], but competition from water, nutrients and space causes individual trees to deviate from it and allocate growth differently within a forest [4]. The properties of the secondary xylem (i.e., wood properties) adapt to the increasing tree size and height, in other words to maintain the transportation of water and carry the increasing weight of the crown. Secondary growth is strongly affected by competition and especially the spatial distribution of trees (i.e., growth space) causing variation in diameter growth allocation and wood properties in different parts of a stem
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