Pieter Zuidema
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pieterzuidema.bsky.social
Pieter Zuidema
@pieterzuidema.bsky.social
Tropical forest ecologist | Professor | Wageningen University 🇳🇱 | Climate change impacts on trees & forests | Tropical 🌳 rings | Dendrochronology | Timber tracing | Model-data integration
🎉Congratulations 🎓 Dr Sophie Zwartsenberg who defended her PhD thesis @w-u-r.bsky.social about climate & CO2 effects on trees in #tropicalforest

Sophie found that 100y of CO2 rise stimulated tree #photosynthesis, that #treerings are narower during hot & dry years, and more so in drier regions. 🌎🍁
October 23, 2025 at 3:51 PM
Yesterday, Bo Zhou successfully defended his PhD thesis at @w-u-r.bsky.social on carbon & water dynamics in a montane forest in subtropical China. Bo studied tree growth rythms & transpiration fluxes.
🎉Congrats 🎓 Dr Bo!
▶️ Defense: wur.yuja.com/V/Watch?v=93...
📙Thesis: research.wur.nl/en/publicati...
September 18, 2025 at 7:43 AM
What does this mean for the future?

The past drought #resilience will very likely diminish. Stronger drought impacts in hotter & drier regions (see Fig) give a glimpse of aggravated drought responses in future. Also, droughts increase tree death, causing lasting carbon losses from forests.
July 31, 2025 at 6:37 PM
What happened after the droughts? And during wet years?

Growth bounced back quickly after droughts. During the 1st post-drought year, pantropical average tree growth was similar to that of pre-drought year. Growth increase during wet years partially compensated for drought impacts.

(2/4)
July 31, 2025 at 6:37 PM
Happy to virtually present a keynote on #treerings in the tropics tomorrow at the WorldDendro conference.

Main message: now that potential & applications of tropical #dendrochronology have been amply shown, it s time to synthesize & scale up to pantropical studies

sites.google.com/view/african...
July 28, 2025 at 5:17 PM
New paper on tropical #timber #tracing! We tested the use of wood oxygen stable isotopes (δ18O ) for tracing. We produced #isoscapes for 5 major tropical timbers. These isoscapes alone had limited utility. Combinations with other techniques may help. #timtrace
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
June 11, 2025 at 4:16 PM
Just returned from the #caatinga dry #forest in Ceara, Brazil where we study how trees deal with #drought.

PhD candidates Natali Caro & Gabriela Ushida equipped 🌳 with sensors & took wood samples for #dendrochronology. Impressive research infrastructure to understand & predict drought impacts.
February 21, 2025 at 7:07 PM
Also fascinated by how trees🌳 respond to climatic changes 🌦️? And by climate info stored in tree rings? Please submit abstract to our #Tree-Ring Session #EGU25

🗓️ Deadline Jan 15
📍 EGU Vienna Apr 27 May 2

More info 👉 meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EGU25/sessio...

#dendrochronology #forest
December 20, 2024 at 4:56 PM