Imprints of Wind Disturbances on Wood Anatomy

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Project Description

Disturbances play a crucial role in forest dynamics. The goal of this project was to analyse differences in wood quality among trees from the Boubín Forest nature reserve, the largest indigenous forest in Central Europe. The forest has been significantly affected by windstorm disturbances in 1868 and 2017. Wood samples from trees aged 300–400 years provide an opportunity to investigate potential changes in wood anatomy associated with these events.

To investigate changes in wood anatomy, annual tree rings were first detected to assign wood cells to the correct year. Within each tree ring, individual wood cells were then identified.The desired outcome was the values of cell lumen area and cell wall thickness for each analysed cell (thousands of cells).