Stenlid, Jan
- Department of Forest Mycology and Plant Pathology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
Research article2012Peer reviewed
Camarero, Julio J.; Stenlid, Jan; Oliva Palau, Jonàs
Allocation of photosynthates to defence responses at the expense of biomass increase is a common strategy amongst plants to cope with stress factors. Trees reduce the spread of decay by creating a secondary metabolite-rich reaction zone as fungal ingresses the sapwood. Reaction zone formation implies a sacrificial conversion of sapwood, thus, as decay progresses, the sapwood area of the tree is reduced. The relative contribution that reaction-zone formation and sapwood loss make to radial growth decrease is unclear. To answer this question we reconstructed radial-growth patterns in 100 Norway spruce (. Picea abies) trees with a range of reaction zone and sapwood disruption. Basal area increment (BAI) between 1960 and 2007 and its relationship with sapwood reduction and reaction zone formation was assessed using structural equation models (SEM). BAI data showed that over 10. years, trees with small or no decay columns (<40%) and a reaction zone shifted from a growth rate that was similar to trees without a reaction zone towards low growth rate similar to trees with large decay columns. The fitted SEM indicated that: (i) the effects of decay on growth would begin with the formation of the reaction zone, and (ii) the smaller sapwood in decayed trees as compared with healthy trees would not reduce radial growth, but would be in part the result of previous periods of low growth due to reaction-zone formation.
Sapwood; Heartwood; Reaction zone; Resistance; Tolerance; Dendrochronology
Forest Ecology and Management
2012, Volume: 274, pages: 201-209
Publisher: Elsevier
SLU Future Forests
Ecology
Botany
Forest Science
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foreco.2012.02.026
https://res.slu.se/id/publ/43777