Chinese Bulletin of Botany ›› 2000, Vol. 17 ›› Issue (专辑): 130-137.

• 专论与综述 • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Wood Structure——A Key for Quantitative Explanation of Global Environmental Changes

YI Tie-mei WANG Yu-fei LI Chen-sen JIANG Xiao-mei XIAO Yang   

  1. 1(Institute of Botany, The Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100093) 2(Institute of Wood Industry, The Chinese Academy of Forestry, Beijing 100091) 3 (Shanxi Agricultural University, Taigu, Shanxi 030801)
  • Online:2000-12-20 Published:2000-12-20

Abstract: Discoveries of abrupt climate changes in the past and predictions of environmental changes in the future have raised an urgent request for high-resolution palaeoenvironmental records. Tree has a variety of responses of growth to climate, both on the basis of inherited capabilities and of their expression under a given set of site conditions. Consequently tree rings record response to a wider range of climate variables over a large part of the Earth than any other kind of annually-dated proxy record, thus tree rings and wood structure are important source of information about past climates and fossil environment. The review covers the fundamentals and methods of dendroclimatology. The main methods of analysis about environmental change in fossil wood are outlined. Also the present paper tries to review the international literatures for showing recent progress in the relation between environmental change and wood struture and growth ring. Unlike tree ring analysis of modern wood, probably thousands of years or less, fossil tree ring can' t be used for dating, however, they are a unique source of detail information about seasonality, annual growing conditions, water availability, limiting temperatures and forest productivity in the geological age. The model of climatic prediction from wood anatomy can be used to predict temperature and precipitation from fossil wood flora.