Abstract
A novel dendroecological procedure was developed to elucidate canopy disturbances spanning a >300-yr period for oak (Quercus) forests of central Pennsylvania. Running comparisons of sequential 10-yr ring-width averages may effectively neutralize both short-term (i.e., drought) and long-term growth trends associated with climate while enhancing detection of abrupt and sustained radial-growth increases characteristic of canopy disturbance. Thinning-response studies revealed the conservative tendencies of overstory oak, with substantial basal area reductions (>1/3) required to attain moderate and consistently detectable growth increases. Based on empirical evidence, a minimum growth-response threshold of 25% was established to depict canopy disturbances. This is in contrast to the 50–100% sustained radial-growth release often used to detect disturbance using understory trees in closed forests. Our default threshold was adjusted higher as necessary for those trees highly correlated to climatic trends (as repr...
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