2026 Articles

From microscopic movements to forest-scale insights: the Nordic Dendrometer Meeting and the emergence of the Global Dendrometer Network

Creek, Danielle; Hackmann, Christina A.; Jucker, Tommaso; Rao, Mukund Palat; Salmon, Yann; Wang, Mianzhi; Zhang, Yuwen; Nemetschek, Daniela

Many forest types such as the boreal and tropics remain under-represented in global tree growth datasets (e.g., Salomón et al. 2022), despite their disproportionate role in the global carbon–water cycle, provision of key ecosystem services and sensitivity to rapid climate change. Addressing these gaps requires a coordinated effort and is essential for improving our understanding of forest responses to environmental variability and for ensuring all forest systems are adequately represented in global syntheses.

Concern over this limited representation, and a shared recognition of the huge potential of high-resolution stem radius variation measurements for gaining insights into forest function, led to the first Nordic Dendrometer Meeting in October 2025 in Ås, Norway. Bringing together 47 researchers working across Europe and beyond, the meeting marked the starting point of a coordinated Nordic effort and, in response to shared challenges identified during the meeting, the launch of a broader Global Dendrometer Network (Figure 1) aimed at: (i) connecting researchers, (ii) developing best practises in sensor deployment, data quality assurance and analysis and (iii) leveraging fine-scale tree growth data to improve our understanding of forest responses to climate change and disturbances.