A steep decline in archiving could make large tree-ring datasets irrelevant. But increased spatiotemporal coverage, the addition of novel parameters at sub-annual resolution, and integration with other in situ and remote Earth observations will elevate tree-ring data as an essential component of global-change research.
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Acknowledgements
We acknowledge funding from the EU-H2020 program (grant 640176, ‘Detecting changes in essential ecosystem and biodiversity properties — towards a Biosphere Atmosphere Change Index: BACI’) and the Swiss National Science Foundation (#P300P2_154543). We thank all ITRDB contributors, advisors and curators, and K. Seftigen, J. Björklund, A. Babst-Kostecka, M. E. K. Evans, and O. Bouriaud for fruitful discussions.
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Babst, F., Poulter, B., Bodesheim, P. et al. Improved tree-ring archives will support earth-system science. Nat Ecol Evol 1, 0008 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-016-0008
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-016-0008
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