Survivorship Bias in the Tree-Ring Reconstructions of Forest Tent Caterpillar Outbreaks Using Trembling Aspen
Affiliation
Natural Resources Canada, Canadian Forest Service, Laurentian Forestry CenterUniversity of Minnesota, Department of Entomology, St. Paul, MN
University of Alberta, Department of Biological Sciences, Edmonton, AB
Issue Date
2003Metadata
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Copyright © Tree-Ring Society. All rights reserved.Collection Information
This item is part of the Tree-Ring Research (formerly Tree-Ring Bulletin) archive. It was digitized from a physical copy provided by the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research at The University of Arizona. For more information about this peer-reviewed scholarly journal, please email the Editor of Tree-Ring Research at editor@treeringsociety.org.Publisher
Tree-Ring SocietyJournal
Tree-Ring ResearchCitation
Cooke, B.J., Miller, W.E., Roland, J. 2003. Survivorship bias in tree-ring reconstructions of forest tent caterpillar outbreaks using trembling aspen. Tree-Ring Research 59(1):29-36.Abstract
When trembling aspen (Populus tremuloides Michx.) from northern Minnesota, USA, were sampled in 2000, the impact on annual radial growth of a 1951-1954 outbreak of forest tent caterpillar (Malacosoma disstria [Hbn.]) was found to be just as strong and clear as it was when estimated from samples taken in 1955. During those 45 intervening years, at least three tent caterpillar outbreaks occurred, yet the statistical distribution of ring-width profiles did not change. This suggests that survivorship bias is not a major impediment to the use of aspen ring widths for inferring the magnitude of past tent caterpillar outbreaks.ISSN
2162-45851536-1098