Monitoring Intra-Annual Wood Formation of Pinus nigra J.F. Arnold (Black Pine) to Understand the Fire Seasonality in Western Anatolia

Abstract

Recent climate and societal changes have increased wildfire activity and prolonged the fire season in many regions of the world. The precision of fire seasonality analysis from tree-ring records can be improved by complementing the subjectively determined intra-ring position of fire scars with more precise studies of wood formation. With this aim, we monitored the wood formation dynamics of Pinus nigra J.F. Arnold (black pine) trees along a climatic gradient in western Anatolia to better understand the wood formation for the interpretation of fire seasonality. Wood microcores were collected from April to November 2021 from trees at four sites across (from north; the Black Sea climate in Bolu to the south; and the Mediterranean climate in Isparta) the areas where previous fire history reconstructions were conducted. These previous studies showed that most fires occurred during the latewood formation period. We found that matured latewood tracheids were observed between September (August) and November, thus suggesting that these fires occurred during late summer and fall. Our results show the importance of temperature and water availability for the timing of earlywood and latewood formations. These findings can be used to better inform planning activities for fire management and as a proxy to reconstruct past fire seasonality.