During last decades, many dendroecological and dendroclimatological studies
have been carried out by our research team on coniferous species.
Our laboratory, the "Centre d'Ecologie Alpine" is located in Grenoble,
France (Laboratoire Ecosystèmes Alpins).
We investigated with dendroecological techniques several forests located in the
French and Italian alpine mountains.
Our work deals with tree growth, climatic change, dendroecology (such as insect
impact) and dendroclimatology.
A detailed list of our publications
is available here, with abstracts for most
articles in different languages
see our
publication list
Wood samples
This web site also shows pictures of many wood
species.
See the photographies of 25 different wood species from Europe (radial,
and tangential cut)
You can also see pictures of many wood samples of tropical tree species
(from Africa, and Southern America) and from Northern America, Europe...
French
alphabetical index ( to select the wood species by french names)
acajou, aubépine, bouleau, charme, charme, chataignier,
chêne, cyprès, épicéa, frêne, if, hêtre, mélèze, noyer, orme,
padouk, palissandre, pin, platane, poirier, robinier, sapelli, sapin,
sorbier, teck, tilleu, wengé... et bien d'autres.
English,
German and Scientific names (to chose a wood sample).
afrormosia, apple tree, aspen, avodire, balsa , beech,
birch, cedar , cocobolo, douglas, ebony, fir, hawthorn, hornbeam,
juniper, larch, lime, mahogany, mansonia, mapple, oak, pear, pine, poplar,
rosewood , sequoia, spruce, teck, tulip wood, walnut, whitebeam, yew,
zebrano.... and so on.
see the tree species list
Studied species
The 6 main coniferous species (Table 1)
growing in South Eastern French Alps have been investigated:
Many sampled sites were compared in several alpine valleys, mainly located in
the south eastern French Alps: Trièves, Vercors,
Chartreuse, Oisans,
Belledonne, Tarentaise,
Briançonnais, Queyras
, and Maurienne, or in the French
Pyrennes.
Some other areas were also analysed in Italy:
the Susa valley (Bardoneccia), and the Trentino & Alto-Adige (South Tirol)
region
Research
Our main research subjects were:
1
Reconstruction
of radial tree growth
We used tree-ring width measurements to compare species, and to analyse
radial tree growth in various ecological conditions. Thus, the tree
ecological requirements were obtained for several species.
2
Tree
ring and climate relationships
The tree-ring and climate relationships of many species were
investigated with classical dendroclimatological tools, such as the
response functions, the correlation functions, the 'gleichlaufigkeit'
method, and pointer years analysis. The densitometrical method (with
X-rays) was also performed to find what climatic factors were significant
during ring formation.
3
Impact of insects and pathogens on tree
growth
Growth reductions and tree dieback caused by some insect species were
studied using ring-width analysis.
The European larch is periodically infested by larch bud moth
caterpillars (Zeiraphera diniana Gn., Lepidoptera: Tortricidae),
every 8 - 9 years. Intense tree defoliation during spring lead to a
photosynthesis decline, and hence to a reduced radial growth. Therefore,
larch extreme narrow rings permited us to date larch bud moth past
ourbreaks. Consequences on tree growth were also measured.
The Norway spruce is infested by Dendroctonus micans Kug.
(Coleoptera, Scolytidae) in the Ardèche region. The bark borer attacks
lead to tree dieback and mortality. This phenomenon had also been studied
with ring width measurements.
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