Dendrolab of Forest Research Institute

Dendrolab of Forest Research Institute

Trees are one of the natural archives of environmental history. They provide long-term data series on the process of radial growth and the factors determining it with annual or even seasonal resolution. Dendrolab of Forest Reseach Institute [Dendrolab IBL] conducts dendroecological and dendroclimatological studies of past and present tree growth using dendrochronology, wood anatomy, and dendrometer data. Studies of growth response to environmental conditions, including various disturbances, provide insight into how trees adapt to different changes, such as climate change or fire regime change. In our research, we take an interdisciplinary approach and collaborate with experts in paleoecology, archeology, climatology, environmental history, remote sensing, wood technology, plant ecology, and hydrology. In our studies, we focus on European temperate forests.

Our current research includes:

Scots pine ecology in pine bog forests

Adaptation of non-native tree species in Europe to climate change

Tree ring fire history reconstruction

Provenance studies

Dendrolab of Forest Research Institute combines laboratories in Sękocin (Department of Silviculture and Forest Tree Genetics) and Białowieża (Department of Natural Forests). Our laboratories offer species identification, cross-dating, digitization and analysis of macro- and microscopic wood samples, etc. Dendrolab of Forest Research Institute is equipped with: stereoscopes with cameras (ZEISS, Leica, Opta-Tech), LINTAB 6, EPSON (A3), ZEISS AxioScanZ1 slide scanner with fluorescence, slide microtomes: WSL microtome, WSL core microtome, Leica HistoCore BIOCUT rotary microtome, Leica TP1020, Leica HistoCore Arcadia. We use a wide range of dedicated software: WinDENDRO, WinCELL, TSAPWin, CooRecorder, CDendro, ROXAS.

We cooperate with leading tree ring laboratories in Europe. We are open to research collaborations on environmental history and tree growth. Dendrolab of Forest Research Institute can host interns, scholar fellows, and undergraduate and graduate students (BSc, MSc, PhD).

Projects implemented in cooperation with Dendrolab

Current papers

Andrei Popa, Jernej Jevšenak, Marcin Dyderski, Radosław Puchałka, Allan Buras, Ionel Popa, Martin Wilmking, Aleksandra Kalisty, Catalin-Constantin Roibu, Marcin Jakubowski, Eric Thurm, Martin Šenfeldr, Marko Smiljanić, Ernst van der Maaten, Jan Esper, Edurne Martinez del Castillo, Vaclav Treml, Jan Tumajer, Tzvetan Zlatanov, Roberts Matisons, Gheorghe Florenta, Veronica Florenta, Maksym Netsvetov, Vladislav Grati, Andreas Burger, Karolina Janecka, Saša Kostić, Kamil Pilch, Diāna Jansone, Agnese Liepiņa, Yulia Prokopuk, Oleksandr Sylenko, Mátyás Árvai, Achim Bräuning, Cristina Marques, Martin Häusser, Emil Horváth, Jakub Jeleń, Ryszard Kaczka, Zoltán Kern, Tomáš Kolář, Marcin Koprowski, Sandra Metslaid, András Morgós, Oleksandr Khodosovtsev, Aleksei Potapov, Michal Rybníček, Irena Sochová, Kristina Sohar, Vasyl Budzhak, Ewa Zin, Tassilo Schneider, Wojciech Gil, Marcin Klisz. Spatiotemporal Variability of Dendroecological Indicators in Pedunculate Oak (Quercus robur L.) Tree-Rings Across Europe in Relation to Species Distribution Models 2025. Global Change Biology 31, no. 11: e70567.
https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.70567.

Bobiec, A., Pilch, K., Wójcik, S. et al. Re-visiting the ancient forest: the analysis of basal area increment reveals the present oak old growth of the Białowieża forest interior recruited amongst pioneering trees. Eur J Forest Res (2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10342-025-01834-w

Marcin Klisz, Radosław Puchałka, Mariusz Gławenda, Marcin Koprowski, Roberts Matisons, Sandra Metslaid, Aleksei Potapov, Tobias Scharnweber, Eric Andreas Thurm, Rita Verbylaite, Adomas Vitas, Martin Wilmking, Jernej Jevšenak. Temperature-driven shifts in spatiotemporal stability of climate-growth responses of Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) from the southern Baltic Sea region. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, Volume 371, 2025, 110628.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agrformet.2025.110628