Tree Ring Data from North Round Pond in Pisgah State Forest NH 1754-2015

Is it possible to reconstruct aboveground carbon/biomass from tree rings? If so, how far back in time can researchers go when using tree-ring data in the reconstruction of past biomass? Answers to these questions will have a significant impact on our understanding of dynamics in the terrestrial carbon sink. Long tree-ring records of biomass can reveal intra-annual to annual to multidecadal variations that cannot be resolved by forest census data that is not conducted at annual time steps. Additionally, while these dynamics might be resolved using remote sensing, most remotely-sensed products are only two decades or less in length. By having long records of carbon biomass, we can then identify not only the dominant drivers of biomass, but how the importance of these drivers might change during different eras as environmental factors change (e.g., climate, air pollution, disturbance). To test these and other questions, we collected tree-ring records from four 30m radius plots set in the vicinity of North Round Pond in Pisgah State Forest, New Hampshire. Two plots are set in broadleaf-dominated forests while two are set in oak-mixed conifer dominated forests. We can convert these data to biomass using allometric equations and compare tree-ring inferred aboveground biomass to the census data going back in time. While a strong hurricane in September 1938 knocked down 80% of a stand ca 3.5 km SSE of these stands and the stands in the vicinity of the North Round Pond are set on N- and NW-facing slopes, and thus potentially shielded by the strong tropical winds, they, too, were disturbed by the hurricane of 1938. However, there are some very old trees and patches of trees in this landscape, while, at the same time, we suspect some logging impacted parts of some of these plots in the 1960s, like in North Round Pond Plot 1. The forest stands have since regrown and the plots we installed can be used to understand forest recovery and carbon dynamics in a heavily disturbance forest. Recruitment dates for some of the trees from these plots have been published in Pederson et al. (2017). Pederson, N., Young, A. B., Stan, A. B., Ariya, U., Martin-Benito, D. 2017. Low-Hanging DendroDynamic Fruits Regarding Disturbance in Temperate, Mesic Forests. In: Amoroso, M. M., Daniels, L. D., Baker, P. J., Camarero, J. J., Dendroecology: Tree-Ring Analyses Applied to Ecological Studies, Springer, Cham., Switzerland.