Tree Rings and Natural Hazards

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xv

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2. Tree Rings and Natural Hazards – An Introduction

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 1-1

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   2. Tree Rings and Natural Hazards: An Introduction

      • Markus Stoffel, Michelle Bollschweiler, David R. Butler, Brian H. Luckman

      Pages 3-23

3. Snow Avalanches

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 26-26

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   2. Dendrogeomorphology and Snow Avalanche Research

      • Brian H. Luckman

      Pages 27-34

   3. Tree-Ring Dating of Snow Avalanches in Glacier National Park, Montana, USA

      • David R. Butler, Carol F. Sawyer, Jacob A. Maas

      Pages 35-46

   4. Tracking Past Snow Avalanches in the SE Pyrenees

      • Elena Muntán, Pere Oller, Emilia Gutiérrez

      Pages 47-50

   5. Tree-Ring Based Reconstruction of Past Snow Avalanche Events and Risk Assessment in Northern Gaspé Peninsula (Québec, Canada)

      • Daniel Germain, Bernard Hétu, Louise Filion

      Pages 51-73

   6. Using Dendrochronology to Validate Numerical Simulations of Snow Avalanches in the Patagonian Andes

      • Alejandro Casteller, Marc Christen, Ricardo Villalba, Veronika Stöckli

      Pages 75-78

4. Landslides

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 80-80

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   2. Dating Landslides with Trees

      • John J. Clague

      Pages 81-89

   3. Dendrogeomorphological Analysis of a Landslide near Lago, Calabria (Italy)

      • Rosanna Fantucci, Marino Sorriso-Valvo

      Pages 91-101

   4. Tree-Ring Analysis and Rockfall Avalanches: The Use of Weighted Samples

      • David R. Butler

      Pages 103-105

   5. Age of Landslides Along the Grande Rivière de la Baleine Estuary, Eastern Coast of Hudson Bay, Quebec (Canada)

      • Christian Bégin, Louise Filion

      Pages 107-120

   6. Rainfall Up, Mountain Down?

      • Leonardo Paolini, Ricardo Villalba

      Pages 121-125

5. Rockfall

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 128-128

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   2. Rockfalls and Their Hazard

      • Fausto Guzzetti, Paola Reichenbach

      Pages 129-137

   3. Assessing Rockfall Activity in a Mountain Forest – Implications for Hazard Assessment

      • Markus Stoffel, Dominique M. Schneuwly, Michelle Bollschweiler

      Pages 139-155

   4. Tree-Ring Based Rockfall Reconstruction and Accuracy Assessment of a 3D Rockfall Model

      • Simone Wehren-Perret, Markus Stoffel

      Pages 157-160

   5. Assessment of the Rockfall Frequency for Hazard Analysis at Solà d’Andorra (Eastern Pyrenees)

      • José Moya, Jordi Corominas, José Pérez Arcas

      Pages 161-175

Dendrogeomorphology Beginnings and Futures: A Personal Reminiscence My early forays into dendrogeomorphology occurred long before I even knew what that word meant. I was working as a young geoscientist in the 1960s and early 1970s on a problem with slope movements and deformed vegetation. At the same time, unknown to me, Jouko Alestalo in Finland was doing something similar. Both of us had seen that trees which produced annual growth rings were reacting to g- morphic processes resulting in changes in their internal and external growth p- terns. Dendroclimatology was an already well established field, but the reactions of trees to other environmental processes were far less well understood in the 1960s. It was Alestalo (1971) who first used the term, dendrogeomorphology. In the early 1970s, I could see that active slope-movement processes were affecting the growth of trees in diverse ways at certain localities. I wanted to learn more about those processes and try to extract a long-term chronology of movement from the highly diverse ring patterns.

• Climate change
• Dendrogeomorphology
• Earthquake
• Geochronology
• Natural hazard
• Tree ring
• geomorphology
• historical geology

From the reviews:

“The four editors, from the US, Canada, and Switzerland, all contribute their research to this volume, along with some 80 other investigators. The papers examine how trees record geological events, accurately dated by the evidence left in annual rings, and the inferences that may be drawn from these long records. … Most analyses are highly detailed and specific, so this material will primarily interest advanced students and scientists conducting geological hazard research. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Graduate students and researchers.” (M. K. Cleaveland, Choice, Vol. 48 (5), January, 2011)

“Tree Rings and Natural Hazards provides a needed and useful survey of a rapidly expanding area of research: using dendrochronology to study geomorphic hazards, including snow avalanches, landslides, rockfall, debris flows, flooding, earthquakes, and volcanic activity. … Any tree-ring scientist … would profit from reading this book, as would other geoscientists and specialists in natural hazards.” (Jeff Lukas, Arctic, Antarctic, and Alpine Research, Vol. 43 (1), February, 2011)

• Inst. Geologie, Labor für Dendrogeomorphologie, Universität Bern, Bern, Switzerland

  Markus Stoffel, Michelle Bollschweiler

• Dept. Geography, Texas State University, San Marcos, USA

  David R. Butler

• Dept. Geography, University of Western Ontario, London, Canada

  Brian H. Luckman

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