Life after recovery: extreme drought & compensatory growth in trees

[@ryannortier3662]

Hi Tom, very interesting study, the findings could make valuable contributions to updating the correlated growth curves for certain species!! Was just wondering if the stand density and soil conditions were constant through out the study area?

[@TomOvenden]

Hi Ryan, really glad you enjoyed it! So we actually looked at two stand densities in this study (high and low) both of which were from the same study site and neighbouring each other, so we assume soil conditions to be similar. We can't rule out small changes in stand density in the period of interest, (for example if some trees die) however we do have a mortality assessment 1 year and 5 years post the 1984 drought we considered in this study, and mortality doesn’t appear to have been elevated above background levels. Of course, stand density will likely change over the life of the stand, but maybe not so much during the key temporal widow we looked at. I have another paper in review at the moment looking at drought induced shifts in competitive dominance at this site. With regards to soil, we don’t have annual records of soil variables, but all the trees were planted on the same site in the same year (it’s a monoculture planted specifically as an experimental forest). I’m pretty confident there will be some changes in soil over the lifetime of the stand (planted in 1935) e.g. in soil pH due to accumulating needles, but as we were mostly interested in 1984 and the following 9 recovery years, I’m not sure whether any changes over this period would be large enough to influence the radial growth response of these trees, which is what we measured. I hope this goes some way to answering your questions!