Wood harvest by pollarding exerts long-term effects on Populus euphratica stands in riparian forests at the Tarim River, NW China

• Pollarding reduces tree height, crown volume and diameter increment.
• Intense pollarding endangers tree stability due to formation of hollows in the stem.
• Stem basal area increment is significantly correlated with crown morphology.
• P. euphratica is capable of regenerating from pollarding due to compensatory growth.
• Sustainable use seems to be possible under moderate forms of pollarding.

Populus euphratica (Euphrates poplar) is the dominant tree species of the riparian (“tugai”) forests of Central Asia, which provide important ecosystem services to a rapidly growing population. However, overuse of the forests by wood harvest (pollarding) contributes markedly to their destabilisation. At the upper reaches of the Tarim River (Xinjiang, NW China), we investigated the effects of past pollarding (in the 1970s and 1980s) on the stand structure, tree morphology, stem diameter increment and intrinsic water use efficiency (iWUE) of poplars with different pollarding intensities in the past (‘No Use’, ‘Moderate’, ‘Intense’) growing on three adjacent plots with the same distance to the groundwater level. Compared to the non-used trees, the pollarded poplars (in particular, the intensely used trees) exhibited smaller figures of the following morphological variables: ratio of tree height to diameter at breast height, vertical crown extension, crown projection area, crown volume, and tree-ring width as well as basal area increment (BAI) during the past 24 years; but a higher number of secondary shoots, a higher percentage of hollow stems and a higher degree of hollowness of the stems. The pollarded trees were capable of regenerating to a certain extent, which was obvious from the formation of secondary shoots and, in the intensely pollarded trees, from a lower iWUE (inferred by more negative δ13C isotopic ratios of the tree rings; most probably due to higher rates of gas exchange) as well as from their capability of re-establishing a crown efficiency similar to non-pollarded trees. However, the BAI of the main trunk and the secondary branches of the pollarded trees decreased continuously during the last 24 years of investigation. Whilst moderate intensities of pollarding seem to be sustainable for the riparian P. euphratica forests, intense pollarding reduces the growth increment of the trees and, even more importantly, results in a distinct increase in the percentage of hollow stems, which can render the trees less stable and more susceptible to secondary damaging factors. The significant correlations between BAI and morphological variables of crown projection area and crown volume are promising for developing approaches to assess the productivity of P. euphratica stands on a landscape level using methods of remote sensing.