Basanta Raj Gautam*

ABSTRACT
The presented study was part of an ongoing research project named EFORWOOD - Tools for Sustainability Impact Assessment of Forestry-Wood Chain in Europe. It is an integrated project funded under the European Union. Out of six complemented module of the EFORWOOD, the study was under module two (Forest Resource Management). Recognizing the importance of tree rings in finding past environmental events, the study was an attempt to analyse radial and height growth of the sample trees. The approach illustrated in this study serves as a demonstration of the growth dynamics analysis combining techniques for field data collection with a scientific approach in laboratory analysis, which provides an important input for long term dendrochronology based growth dynamic analysis.

Key words: dendrochronology, radial increment, height increment, environmental impact

INTRODUCTION
Forests play a major role in global environmental change (Dixon et al. 1994). The response of forests to climatic changes emphasizes the need for information regarding the effects of environmental variability on forest ecosystems. Uncertainty surrounds the extent to which tree growth can react to environmental changes, such as rising CO2, N deposition, and increases in temperature and solar radiation (Marco et al. 2004). Younger trees and forest stands are generally considered more responsive than older trees and stands to changes in environmental conditions (Ryan et al. 1997, Mund et al. 2002). Thus, a climate change-induced increase in ring width and carbon stock is expected to be greater in younger stands than in older ones. The increase in forest productivity could prove to be direct evidence of the increase in photosynthetic activity of terrestrial vegetation and the lengthening of the active growing season, as inferred from satellite data (Myneni et al. 1997). The general hypothesis is younger forest stands are growing faster than older ones when they were the age of the younger ones, possibly as a result of recent indirect human-induced effects, such as rising CO2 and temperatures and N deposition, at both global and regional scales.

*Correspondence
Basanta Raj Gautam
University of Joensuu, Faculty of Forest Sciences,
P.O.Box 111, 80101 Joensuu, Finland
Telephone: +358 468479124
Fax: +358 132514422
E-mail: gautam@cc.joensuu.fi

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