On 28 November 2022, at the invitation of Professor Gou Xiaohua and Young Researcher Zhang Junzhou from the Key Laboratory of Western Environment Ministry of Education, College of Resources and Environment, Lanzhou University, Professor Neil Pederson from Harvard University Forest Research Center gave a lecture on "Frontiers in Dendrochronology" to our students and faculty. "The second online lecture of this series was given by Neil Pederson, a researcher from the Center for Forest Research, Harvard University, USA. The lecture was hosted by Zhang Junzhou, a young researcher, and was attended by more than 80 faculty members, undergraduates, and postgraduates from Lanzhou University and related universities and research institutes through the online conference.
Neil Pederson introduced the international frontier research progress of dendrochronology from different aspects, focusing on the application of tree chronology in the direction of forest ecology. Firstly, Neil Pederson answered the questions raised by the participants in the previous presentation about the biomass reconstruction of tree rings, and explained the method of using tree rings to reconstruct past biomass, as well as the influence of factors such as forest self-thinning, age, and species on biomass reconstruction. Pederson then presented recent advances in tree wheel ecology, including the linear response of different tree species to temperature and the non-linear response to potential evapotranspiration, the use of wheel anatomy to study latewood loss due to volcanic eruptions, and the anisotropic relationship between tree species, age, and diameter at breast height in the tropics. Finally, Neil Pederson presented his team's research on the vulnerability of forests to climate change. Under climate change conditions, different forest populations respond and adapt differently to climate factors, with northern populations being limited by winter temperatures and central populations being limited mainly by summer drought stress.
The presentation was followed by a lively discussion among the students and faculty, and Neil Pederson provided in-depth answers to the many research questions of interest to the students and faculty.
Expert profile：
Neil Pederson is a Senior Ecologist and Research Fellow at Harvard Forest, Harvard University, USA. He is involved in research on the response of tree growth and forest dynamics to climate and its mechanisms. He has been a key player in international research on tree wheel ecology, particularly in the study of temperate broadleaf mixed forest disturbance, where his insights are unique and widely influential. He has made important advances in the study of temperate tree wheel climatology, especially in the breakthroughs in the patterns of climate change in Mongolia's past and their effects on forest communities. He has also worked on natural history, giant flora, ancient forests, and tree characteristics. He has published more than 120 papers in international journals such as PNAS, Global Change Biology, Ecological Monographs, Journal of Climate, Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, and has been cited more than 2,600 times.
