Permanent sample plots (PSPs) have been instrumental in providing the long-term data required to elucidate tree growth and ecological interactions. However, they require decades of continuous monitoring and demand substantial technical, financial, and human resources. Dendrochronology is a reliable technique that allows the reconstruction of annual growth trajectories retrospectively, thus enabling the determination of annual diameter, basal area, volume, and biomass increments. Retrophyllum rospigliosii is an endemic conifer that has been used in Andean restoration programs and commercial reforestation trials. In this study, we have merged two complementary datasets from a R. rospigliosii forest plantation established in 1999 in the Colombian Andes. The first dataset is a 20-year record from 30 PSPs, and the second is a tree-ring-width series from sixteen trees, which collectively span the full range of diameter classes present within the plantation. The von Bertalanffy growth model was used to simulate individual tree-level diameter and biomass growth trajectories, and their variability was then compared with that observed in PSP measurements across years. The simulated tree-level diameter and biomass growth trajectories, generated using the fitted von Bertalanffy model, exhibited variability patterns that were consistent with the observed values from the PSP dataset. The 95% confidence intervals of the PSP observations were found to generally coincide with those of the simulated curves, thereby indicating that the fitted model effectively captured the variability observed in the PSP measurements. This study demonstrates the potential of dendrochronological data as an effective tool for modeling diameter and biomass growth trajectories in R. rospigliosii plantations and reproduces the growth curves derived from long-term PSP monitoring. The findings demonstrate the potential of tree-ring data to address critical temporal gaps in forest monitoring, providing a retrospective complement to ongoing PSP measurements.
Martínez et al. (Wed,) studied this question.