Understanding how trees cope with environmental stress is paramount to predict forest dynamics and composition under global change. Drought, heat and cold stresses constrain tree functioning and global change is already driving tree functional responses to changing hydroclimatic conditions. Ecophysiological responses include changes in the short-term regulation of water and carbon use, from the organ to the whole-plant levels. Dendroeocology and wood anatomy studies provide a longer-term perspective on radial growth history and its drivers, allowing us to infer legacy effects of chronic and episodic stresses, including climate-driven changes in xylem and phloem properties influencing transport of water and sugars within the plant.
This session focuses on experimental and model-data integration studies of tree functioning under environmental stress. We specially welcome studies using one or more of the following instrumental techniques: (i) gas exchange, (ii) tree hydraulics and sap flow, (iii) automatic dendrometers, (iv) dendrochronology and (v) quantitative wood anatomy.