Book Review of "Tree Rings and Natural Hazards: A State-of-the-Art"

Abstract

TREE RINGS AND NATURAL HAZARDS: A STATEOF-THE-ART, BY: MARKUS STOFFEL, MICHELLE BOLLSCHWEILER, DAVID R. BUTLER, AND BRIAN H. LUCKMAN (EDS.), SPRINGER, DORDRECHT, THE NETHERLANDS, 505 PAGES, ISBN 978-90-481-8735-5 (HARDCOVER), ISBN 978-90-481-8736-2 (E-BOOK), PRICE: 160,45 C This book organizes 47 articles into eleven parts. Written by the editors, Part I is the introduction and Part XI the overall conclusion and outlook. In between, the nine parts has four to six articles each. Each part begins with an introductory overview, followed by several case studies conducted primarily in Europe and North America. Some of the articles are two or three pages in length, while others are like fulllength journal articles. Some appear to have been completed earlier, but many others appear to have been written for this edited volume. Readers who are not familiar with dendrogeomorphology or dendrochronology are recommended to start with Part I. The introduction explains how tree growth can be affected by natural hazards, how these effects are preserved in tree rings, and how tree rings are sampled and processed in laboratory analysis. It also covers the frequency, magnitude, and return period of a natural hazard, which are closely associated with tree-ring applications. Part II focuses on snow avalanche. Evidence of past avalanche activity can be gathered by analyzing impact scars, reaction wood, suppression rings, and, more recently, traumatic resin ducts in tree rings. Relying on such evidence, Germain et al. were able to estimate the return interval and annual probability of high-magnitude avalanches at the local and regional scales in the Gaspe Peninsula, Quebec (Canada). Other case studies used tree-ring analysis to vali-