Workshops

Workshop I

How can R help in dendrochronology: moving forward and beyond

Roberts Matisons

Latvian State Forest Research Institute Silava

Data curation, analysis, and visualization are paramount for a successful scientific effort. Usually for the efforts, different platforms and software (programmes) are used, which burden the process and render its repeatability, particularly in case of time-limited revisions, troublesome. Murphy’s laws also govern the universe. Accordingly, application of a single platform/software for the above-mentioned tasks can facilitate/improve the scientist’s day, particularly in the long run. Among the freeware, R is one of the most promising programs in many sciences, including dendrochronology.

In the workshop, R, its principles, ideas, and merits will be presented in a practical manner aiming to meet needs of dendrochronological research. Topics from data preparation, import, standardisation, evaluation, and analysis will be demonstrated and furnished with some theoretical aspects. Several statistical concepts and methods for the extraction of environmental signals stored in tree ring data will be assessed. Basics of visualization of the acquired results will be presented.

For the workshop, it is highly recommended that participants take their laptops with them. If there is an option, MS is preferable over Mac, though both systems are compatible with R.

It is also advantageous if the latest version of R and RStudio (which is a graphical interface for R) is installed un laptops as well as the packages “readxl”, “dplR”, “treeclim”, “pointRes”, “plyr”, “mgcv”, “FactoMineR”, “MASS”, “lme4”, “nlme”, “reshape2”, “lmerTest”, “emmeans”, and “gratia”. Note, that the program is case sensitive.

It is also advisable that participants take their own datasets (crossdated tree-ring time series) with them, although sample datasets will be provided.

 

Workshop II

Blue rings

Alan Crivellaro¹ and Aleksei Potapov²

¹ Forest Biometrics Laboratory, Faculty of Forestry, “Stefan cel Mare” University of Suceava, Romania

² Institute of Forestry and Engineering, Estonian University of Life Sciences, Estonia

This hands-on workshop dedicated to blue rings in dendrochronology will be structured in two parts. First, a presentation of how blue rings were described and a review of the current understanding of their formation hypothesis will be drawn. Then a hands-on, laboratory-led activity will explore sampling techniques in the field, wood sectioning, double staining and blue ring observations through the microscope. The workshop will offer the opportunity to update on personal experiences on blue ring occurrence analyses and formation hypotheses.