Range limits of forest species are frequently imposed by spatial gradients in climatic variables. Tolerance to maximum and minimum temperatures, including short-term extremes, and tolerance to desiccation are crucial limiting factors for plant survival and often appear interrelated (Box 1995; Choat et al. 2018). Increasing temperatures, more frequent and extreme droughts and late frost events associated with global climate change will affect the dynamics of forest ecosystems and have the potential to dramatically increase plant mortality and accelerate species range shifts if plants are not able to adapt in situ to the novel climate regimes (Parmesan 2006; Choat et al., 2012). This is particularly important at species range edges, where climatic conditions may not be sufficient to impose mortality on individuals directly, but trees experience greater physiological stress, which influences such factors as dispersal, habitat selection, and subsequent reproductive fitness (Parmesan 2006). In such marginal situations, where gene flow may be also restricted (López de Heredia et al. 2010), the effectiveness of adjustment through natural selection is limited resulting in increased vulnerability to extreme climatic events and to a higher risk of mortality of trees.
Tree responses to drought and frost have been extensively studied at many scales from ecophysiology to molecular biology across a large range of species inhabiting diverse biomes (Sakai and Larcher 1987; Bréda et al. 2006). Avoiding dehydration of tissues to maintain cellular viability and function is at the basis of the plant strategy to deal with both constraints as shown by Charrier et al. (2020). These authors go one step further and discuss the impact of the interaction of drought and frost on tree water status and carbon metabolism with special emphasis on the temporal context. Plants from temperate and boreal regions show changes in their resistance to freezing temperature throughout the year (Bower and Aitken 2006) and xylem becomes more resistant to cavitation with cambial age (Rodríguez-Zaccaro et al. 2019). Including timing in this framework involves incorporating phenology. This will be a fundamental step to model species distribution limits in the face of climate change since most observations of climate-change responses have involved alterations of species’ phenologies (Parmesan et al. 2006). For example, the onset of the growing season of trees in temperate Europe is 2.3 days ahead per decade during the last 40 years (Parmesan et al. 2006). Moreover, some studies have shown that climatic constraints limit species distribution mainly because of their impact in phenology rather than their impact on drought and frost mortality (Morin et al. 2007). However, longer growing seasons along with more frequent extreme events increase the probability of long-lived organisms such as trees to experience frosts and drought during the same growing season or one of them after uncompleted recovery of the other in some latitudes. Over the last decade much attention has been devoted to the recovery of growth and ecological function after stressful events (Lloret et al. 2011). Some dendroecological studies have shown for example that resilience to extreme droughts might be constrained by having experienced more frequent droughts, thus exceeding the potential for acclimation of the tree (Bose et al. 2020). Drought can result in chronic hydraulic impairment which can last moths to years (Anderegg et al. 2015) and for some species also in cavitation fatigue, i.e. a progressive increase in vulnerability to cavitation (Hacke et al. 2001), thus increasing vulnerability to subsequent drought and frost events.
Models have proved to be useful tools for synthetizing and integrating climate and soil properties with key functional traits in order to determine desiccation dynamics, carbon metabolism and plant survival during drought of frost (Martin-StPaul et al., 2017; Charrier et al. 2018; Blackman et al., 2019). However, models are currently limited by gaps in our understanding of the fundamental physiological mechanisms that constrain species ranges. Most common approaches to studying species range shifts are related to climatic niches and overlook the processes and traits involved in drought or frost tolerance (Cheaib et al. 2012). Process-based models based on plant hydraulics seem promising providing the link between environmental cues and plant responses, although disregarding carbon metabolism will not give us predictive understanding of system changes such as those due to climate fluctuations (Mackay et al. 2015). New modeling approaches need to be developed not only for better drought prediction performance but for the interaction of drought with other factors. Charrier et al. (2020) offer a framework for improving process-based models with the aim to provide better prediction of carbon and water economy, organ development and ultimately species distribution limits in the face of warmer winters and more frequent winter droughts at high altitudes and late frosts events.

References

Anderegg WR, Schwalm C, Biondi F, Camarero JJ, Koch G, Litvak M, Ogle K, Shaw JD, Shevliakova E, Williams A (2015) Pervasive drought legacies in forest ecosystems and their implications for carbon cycle models. Science 349: 528–532. doi: https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aab1833
Blackman CJ, Li X, Choat B, Rymer PD, De Kauwe MG, Duursma RA, Tissue DT, Medlyn BE (2019) Desiccation time during drought is highly predictable across species of Eucalyptus from contrasting climates. New Phytologist 224: 632-643. doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/nph.16042
Box EO (1995) Factors determining distributions of tree species and plant functional types. Vegetatio 121, 101–116 (1995). doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00044676
Bower AD, Aitken SN (2006) Geographic and seasonal variation in cold hardiness of whitebark pine. Can J For Res 36:1842–1850. doi: https://doi.org/10.1139/x06-067
Bréda N, Huc R, Granier A, Dreyer E (2006) Temperate forest trees and stands under severe drought:  a review of  ecophysiological responses, adaptation processes  and long-term consequences. Ann. For. Sci. 63: 625-644. doi: https://doi.org/10.1051/forest:2006042
Charrier G, Lacointe A, Améglio T (2018) Dynamic modeling of carbon metabolism during the dormant period accurately predicts the changes in frost hardiness in walnut trees Juglans regia L. Frontiers in Plant Science, 9: 1746. doi: https://doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2018.01746
Charrier G, Martin-Stpaul N, Damesin C, Delpierre N, Hänninen H, Torres-Ruiz J, Hendrik Davi H (2020) Interaction of drought and frost in tree ecophysiology: rethinking the timing of risks. HAL, 02475505, ver. 4 peer-reviewed and recommended by PCI Forest & Wood Sciences. https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02475505v4
Cheaib A, Badeau V, Boe J, Chuine I, Delire C, Dufrêne E, François C, Gritti ES, Legay M, Pagé C (2012) Climate change impacts on tree ranges: model intercomparison facilitates understanding and quantification of uncertainty. Ecology Letters 15(6): 533-544. doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1461-0248.2012.01764.x
Choat B, Jansen S, Brodribb TJ, Cochard H, Delzon S, et al. (2012) Global convergence in the vulnerability of forests to drought. Nature 491, 752–755. doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/nature11688
Choat B, Brodribb TJ, Brodersen CR, Duursma RA, López R, Medlyn BE (2018) Triggers of tree mortality under drought. Nature 558(7711): 531-539. doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-018-0240-x
Hacke UG, Stiller V, Sperry JS, Pittermann J, McCulloh KA (2001) Cavitation fatigue. Embolism and refilling cycles can weaken the cavitation resistance of xylem. Plant Physol., 125(2), 779–786. doi: https://doi.org/10.1104/pp.125.2.779
Lloret F, Keeling EG, Sala A (2011) Components of tree resilience: effects of successive low‐growth episodes in old ponderosa pine forests. Oikos, 120: 1909-1920. doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1600-0706.2011.19372.x
López de Heredia U, Venturas M, López R, Gil L (2010) High biogeographical and evolutionary value of Canary Island pine populations out of the elevational pinebelt: the case of a relict coastal population. J. Biogeogr. 37, 2371–2383. doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2699.2010.02367.x
Mackay DS, Roberts DE, Ewers BE, Sperry JS, McDowell NG, Pockman WT (2015) Interdependence of chronic hydraulic dysfunction and canopy processes can improve integrated models of tree response to drought, Water Resour. Res., 51, 6156–6176. doi: https://doi.org/10.1002/ 2015WR017244
Martin-StPaul N, Delzon S, Cochard H (2017) Plant resistance to drought depends on timely stomatal closure. Ecology Letters 20(11): 1437-1447. doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/ele.12851
Morin X, Augspurger C, Chuine I (2007) Process-based modeling of species' distributions: what limits temperate tree species' range boundaries? Ecology 88(9):2280-2291. doi: https://doi.org/10.1890/06-1591.1 PMID: 17918406.
Parmesan C (2006) Ecological and evolutionary responses to recent climate change. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 37, 637–669. doi: https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.ecolsys.37.091305.110100
Rodriguez‐Zaccaro FD, Valdovinos‐Ayala J, Percolla MI, Venturas MD, Pratt RB, Jacobsen AL (2019) Wood structure and function change with maturity: Age of the vascular cambium is associated with xylem changes in current‐year growth. Plant Cell Environ.42: 1816– 1831. doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/pce.13528
Sakai A, Larcher W (1987) Frost survival of plants. Ecol Stud. 62: 1– 321. doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-71745-1

The mechanics of wood as a material for construction, furniture, pulp and other uses have been addressed in a very large number of papers and are a well-established field for both research and technical applications (for example among many others, see Pöhler et al., 2006 for beechwood). In addition to such approaches that derive from material sciences, further developments based on similar physical concepts addressed the questions raised by the biomechanics of the standing and the growing tree which requires some degree of postural control and sensing of specific signals (gravity, movements…; see for instance Fournier et al. 2013; Dlouha et al., 2025). Within this field of research, the question of the correlation of wood anatomy (diameter of xylem tracheids or vessels, fibre content and angles, vessel wall thickness… ) and biomechanical properties is of prime importance, and specific responses of wood and bark components have been identified over the last decades. In particular the occurrence of reaction wood generates local strains and contributes to the postural control (Ruelle, 2014).

In this preprint, Almeras et al. address a complementary question related to the properties of juvenile wood in trees. During the first years of the growth of young trees, the annual tree rings display quite specific properties (large tree rings, less dense wood, …) that gradually change with age and dimensions of the trees until reaching a range of values typical for adult trees. During the first years, the interannual changes might follow an ontogenetic trajectory mainly related to age (and dimensions) while in later stages, they appear to be strongly controlled by environment (wind, soil fertility, site index, irradiance, water availability, ...). All these changes result in radial profiles along tree rings (from the pith to the bark) of three main features that govern the biomechanical properties of wood, namely the width of the annual tree ring, the local specific gravity (wood density), and the specific modulus which contributes with density to the local modulus of elasticity (Fournier et al. 2013). Such gradients of local wood properties within stems have been analysed and synthesised in the last years (Lachenbruch et al. 2011, Meinzer et al. 2014). 

Here, the authors address the question of local variations of such properties within tree stems as a function of the distance to the pith (inversely related to the age of the trees when the ring was formed) in a broadleaved species, European Beech (Fagus sylvatica L.). They checked whether ring width, specific gravity and specific modulus display systematic trends from pith to bark across tree stems, and whether these trends enable the detection of a general ontogenic (age-related) effect with very similar patterns in juvenile wood of different individuals, or whether adaptive factors (modulated by the environment and by the mechanical constraints induced by the postural control of growth) dominate already in juvenile wood, like it does at later stages. Such questions were already analysed in the wood of some coniferous species (softwood with tracheids), but less frequently in hardwood species (angiosperms, like Beech with its diffuse porous wood anatomy).

Before starting the analysis of age-related tree ring properties in juvenile wood, the authors addressed the potential impact of duraminisation, which affects the oldest tree rings in the inner wood (that is those formed during the juvenile growth stages). Duraminisation results from local deposition of a number of secondary metabolites and results in the build-up of heartwood; in the case of beech however, reddish heartwood is less present than in other species (Knoke, 2003). Almeras et al showed here that the occurrence of reddish wood did only marginally affect the mechanical properties and contributed only marginally to the observed variations among trees 

The very solid experimental design enabled the authors to clearly assign a fraction of the observed variation in the three parameters to (i) the site where trees had grown, (ii) to the individuals within these sites and (iii) to the position of the ring within the stem. The intraindividual component of the variation was much larger than the former. However, the observed asymmetry in the patterns of ring properties in juvenile wood, and the large variability in these patterns among trees led the authors conclude that the ontogenic juvenility effects, visible in ring width were largely dominated by other effects influenced by the local environment. In this respect, the results differ from those that were recorded earlier with Pinus taeda L. in a plantation (i.e., trees of the same age and homogenous spatial distribution, Bendtsen and Senft, 1986). 

The recommended version of the preprint is very original as it shows how local (radial) variations of biomechanical wood properties can be addressed in a systematic way. This lead to novel approaches that share light on the processes governing wood formation in trees.

The first version of the preprint was submitted over a year ago. The recommended version differs in many respects from the initial one. The two rounds of reviews with external reviewers, and the additional one with the recommender resulted in an in-depth reorganisation of the statistical analysis and of the demonstration. This took some time, but shows also the benefits that may be gained during an open peer review process like the one developed by the Peer Community in…. 

References

Bendtsen BA, Senft J. 1986. Mechanical and anatomical properties in individual growth rings of plantation-grown eastern cottonwood and loblolly pine. Wood Fiber Sci 18: 23-38. 

Dlouhá J, Moulia B, Fournier, M et al. 2025 Beyond the perception of wind only as a meteorological hazard: importance of mechanobiology for biomass allocation, forest ecology and management. Ann For Sci 82, 1. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13595-024-01271-6 

Fournier M, Dlouha J, Jaouen G, Alméras T. 2013. Integrative biomechanics for tree ecology: beyond wood density and strength. J Exp Bot, 64, 4793-4815. https://doi.org/10.1093/jxb/ert279

Knoke T. 2003 Predicting red heartwood formation in beech trees (Fagus sylvatica L.)? Ecol. Model. 169, 289-312. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0304-3800(03)00276-X 

Lachenbruch, B., Moore, J.R., Evans, R. (2011). Radial Variation in wood structure and function in woodypPlants, and hypotheses for its occurrence. In: Meinzer, F., Lachenbruch, B., Dawson, T. (eds) Size- and age-related changes in tree structure and function. Tree Physiology, vol 4. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1242-3_5 

Longuetaud F, Mothe F, Santenoise P, Diop N, Dlouha J, Fournier M, Deleuze C. 2017. Patterns of within-stem variations in wood specific gravity and water content for five temperate tree species. Ann For Sci 74:64. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13595-017-0657-7

Meinzer, F., Lachenbruch, B., Dawson, T. (eds). 2014. Size- and age-related changes in tree structure and function. Tree Physiology, vol 4. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1242-3_5 

Pöhler E, Klingner R, Künniger T. 2006. Beech (Fagus sylvatica L.) - Technological properties, adhesion behaviour and colour stability with and without coatings of the red heartwood. Ann For Sci 63: 129-137. https://doi.org/10.1051/forest:2005105

Ruelle J. 2014. Morphology, anatomy and ultrastructure of reaction wood. In: Gardiner B, Barnett J, Saranpää P, Gril J (eds) The Biology of Reaction Wood. Springer Series in Wood Science. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-10814-3_2 

Cite the recommended preprint: 

Almeras Tancrède, Jullien Delphine, Liu Shengquan, Loup Caroline, Gril Joseph, Thibaut Bernard (2025) The diversity of radial variations of wood properties in European beech reveals the plastic nature of juvenile wood. HAL, ver.6 peer-reviewed and recommended by PCI Forest and Wood Sciences https://hal.science/hal-04133248