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Improved tree-ring archives will support earth-system science

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A steep decline in archiving could make large tree-ring datasets irrelevant. But increased spatiotemporal coverage, the addition of novel parameters at sub-annual resolution, and integration with other in situ and remote Earth observations will elevate tree-ring data as an essential component of global-change research.

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Figure 1: The coverage of satellite and tree-ring records since 1950.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge funding from the EU-H2020 program (grant 640176, ‘Detecting changes in essential ecosystem and biodiversity properties — towards a Biosphere Atmosphere Change Index: BACI’) and the Swiss National Science Foundation (#P300P2_154543). We thank all ITRDB contributors, advisors and curators, and K. Seftigen, J. Björklund, A. Babst-Kostecka, M. E. K. Evans, and O. Bouriaud for fruitful discussions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dendroclimatology, Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL, Zürcherstrasse 111, Birmensdorf, CH-8903, Switzerland

    Flurin Babst & David C. Frank

  2. W. Szafer Institute of Botany, Polish Academy of Sciences, ul. Lubicz 46, Krakow, 31-512, Poland

    Flurin Babst

  3. Department of Ecology, Montana State University, Bozeman, Montana, USA

    Benjamin Poulter

  4. NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland, 20771, USA

    Benjamin Poulter

  5. Department of Geographical Sciences, University of Maryland, College Park, 20742, Maryland, USA

    Benjamin Poulter

  6. Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, Jena, 07745, Germany

    Paul Bodesheim & Miguel D. Mahecha

  7. German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig, Leipzig, 04103, Germany

    Miguel D. Mahecha

  8. Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research, University of Arizona, 1215 E Lowell Street, Tucson, 85721, Arizona, USA

    David C. Frank

Authors
  1. Flurin Babst
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  2. Benjamin Poulter
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  3. Paul Bodesheim
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  4. Miguel D. Mahecha
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  5. David C. Frank
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Correspondence to Flurin Babst.

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Babst, F., Poulter, B., Bodesheim, P. et al. Improved tree-ring archives will support earth-system science. Nat Ecol Evol 1, 0008 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-016-0008

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