The use of precision dendrometers in research on daily stem size and wood property variation: A review

Dendrometers are instruments which are used to measure the diameters of trees. This review considers the use of dendrometers with high spatial and temporal precision in past and present research, the value of which is increasingly being realised. Various insights into tree growth and physiology can be obtained using high-resolution dendrometers, including the assessment of stem daily water status and the understanding of short-term growth responses to changing environmental conditions. This kind of data is useful for irrigation scheduling, assessing site quality, and developing models of the main drivers of tree growth at sub-diurnal resolution. A third, more novel application is the potential these instruments provide as a “template” that relates temporal measurement of growth to spatial measurements of wood properties. Accordingly, this kind of “re-scaled” data is useful in linking environmental conditions which prevailed as the wood formed to varying wood properties along a pith-to-bark wood profile of the sort generated by systems like CSIRO's SilviScan™. This can provide valuable insights into how tree ring structure and radially varying wood properties represent past climates. The development of dendrometers, their use in these three main areas, and a systematic approach to growth-wood property rescaling is discussed in this review.