Dendroecology: Principles and Practice

Dendroecology: Principles and Practice by Richard Phipps and Thomas Yanosky was published in 2020 by J. Ross Publishing (ISBN 978-160427-145-4) and is available directly by the publisher and throughmultiple on-line bookstores. The book is based on the extensive dendrochronological experience of both authors, who have pioneered some of the early advances of the field, particularly regarding hydrological studies and reconstructions and the use of basal area increments (BAI) to better estimate and compare tree growth. The text introduces the reader to the origins and early ideas of dendroecology. Following examples and anecdotes, the authors describe multiple environmental drivers that can be explored using classic tree-ring methods. The book is easy to read and enjoyable, and the career-long passion of the authors for the topic is contagious. The text is divided in eight chapters, starting with an introduction to dendrochronological history and the basics of ring formation. It then addresses some of the more practical issues in classical dendrochronological sampling, including collection, measurement, and crossdating. In the remaining five chapters, examples are provided on how to apply these techniques. The last chapter also presents and discusses changes in growth trends in a large collection of 47 white oak sites in North America, collected between 1977 and 1992 by multiple authors as the most in-depth analysis. The book will be very useful for readers wanting to have a first overview of the discipline and for those interested in the discipline’s foundation stones, the base for much dendroecology of the last few decades. Analyses will feel familiar for those coming from dendroclimatology. This book may serve many as a steppingstone into the field, which can be complemented with other collections of recent advances in dendroecology, such as Amoroso (2017), which draws on a great diversity of authors to summarize and discuss the future of dendroecology for a range of subdisciplines and processes. It is, however, remarkable that, despite large advances in methods and theory, dendroecology still lacks a central textbook in the way that Fritts (1976) or Schweingruber (1987) have been for dendroclimatology. I particularly enjoyed the detailed descriptions of study sites and small data collections by the authors, and the careful interpretation of the results. The authors go above and beyond to consider alternative hypotheses to their data and to stress the need for further understanding of the deceptively simple question of how trees grow. It is great to see such care and humbleness, which the early dendroecologists had in abundance and that we should make sure to continue preserving as the discipline advances. The description of the development and use of BAI is very interesting, and it left me thinking there is still more to explore and develop theoretically using that very simple model of tree growth. Using BAI trajectories’ slope to assess ecosystem development and site quality is very thought-provoking and not something I have seen further developed in other works, classic or recent. However, although the book does a great job in describing the origin and reasoning behind the traditional methods and metrics, the discussion of recent approaches and theory is most definitively weaker. Much of the dendroecological work done in the last 30 years is not really acknowledged in the text, and the vast majority of data and references presented precede the 1990s. This can be