Keywords :
Climate; Tomography, X-Ray Computed; Software; Trees/anatomy & histology; Wood; Trees; Neuroscience (all); Chemical Engineering (all); Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology (all); Immunology and Microbiology (all); General Immunology and Microbiology; General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology; General Chemical Engineering; General Neuroscience
Abstract :
[en] An X-ray computed tomography (CT) toolchain is presented to obtain tree-ring width (TRW), maximum latewood density (MXD), other density parameters, and quantitative wood anatomy (QWA) data without the need for labor-intensive surface treatment or any physical sample preparation. The focus here is on increment cores and scanning procedures at resolutions ranging from 60 µm down to 4 µm. Three scales are defined at which wood should be looked at: (i) inter-ring scale, (ii) ring scale, i.e., tree-ring analysis and densitometry scale, as well as (iii) anatomical scale, the latter approaching the conventional thin-section quality. Custom-designed sample holders for each of these scales enable high-throughput scanning of multiple increment cores. A series of software routines were specifically developed to efficiently treat three-dimensional X-ray CT images of the tree cores for TRW and densitometry. This work briefly explains the basic principles of CT, which are needed for a proper understanding of the protocol. The protocol is presented for some known species that are commonly used in dendrochronology. The combination of rough density estimates, TRW and MXD data, as well as quantitative anatomy data, allows us to broaden and deepen current analyses for climate reconstructions or tree response, as well as further develop the field of dendroecology/climatology and archeology.
Disciplines :
Agriculture & agronomy
Phytobiology (plant sciences, forestry, mycology...)
Life sciences: Multidisciplinary, general & others
Funding text :
We thank the three anonymous reviewers for their feedback and suggestions. This research was funded by the BOF Special Research Fund for JVdB (BOF Starting Grant BOF.STG.2018.0007.01), for the UGCT as a Center of Expertise (BOF.EXP.2017.0007) and as a Core Facility (BOF.COR.2022.008), The authors also acknowledge the Research Foundation Flanders (G019521N and G009720N), and the UGent Industrial Research Fund (IOF) for the financial support to the infrastructure through grant IOF.APP.2021.0005 (project FaCT F2021/IOF-Equip/021).
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