Posted by Julia Kaplick @julekap

In June this year I was lucky enough to escape the Auckland winter weather and learn some new skills at a Wood Anatomy Course in the Swiss Alps. It is a long running course organized by Dr Holger Gärtner, Prof Fritz Schweingruber from the Swiss Federal Institute of Forest, Snow and Landscape Research and Dr Alan Crivellaro from the University of Padua in Italy. The two main aspects of the course are the theoretical basics of the anatomical features of wood and the practical skills needed for sampling and preparing wood thin sections. This might not be obvious to everyone, but I was super excited to go and it was not because it took place in Klosters, where Prince Charles goes on skiing holidays.

There are many different scientific applications for wood anatomy, but I am most interested in the connection with tree water relations. Anatomical features like lumen area and cell wall thickness vary seasonally and are strongly influenced by climatic conditions. The wood anatomy also affects hydraulic characteristics of trees. Tree species with larger lumen areas can transport more water, but they are also more likely to suffer from embolism (the formation of air bubbles) during times of drought stress.

The first day of the week-long course was all about the theoretical background. We spent the day looking at many thin sections under the microscope, starting with simple conifers, and later learned about the more complex structures of angiosperms and even had a glimpse at some crazy looking non-woody species. On the following days we went to some beautiful alpine valleys to try out different sampling techniques and learned how to prepare and stain professional thin sections from our own samples.

I could have easily spent the whole week cutting and staining my samples, but we also got to go on two little trips. The first one was a walk through a sustainably managed forest area, together with the responsible forester. The second trip was a visit to the Institute of Snow and Avalanche Research in Davos where we got to see the latest fashion accessories on the Swiss skiing field and also got to know a little more about how effective forest is as a protection against avalanches. Another highlight of the week was Helga, the lovely hotel cook who insisted on providing us with two hot meals a day, to keep our brains running. Yes, there was a lot of cheese and chocolate.

 

Julia Kaplick is a PhD student in the Centre of Biodiversity and Biosecurity, School of Biological Sciences, University of Auckland. She is researching the response of native trees to seasonal variation in climatic conditions using measurements of sap flow, water relations and carbon allocation. Julia is supervised by Cate Macinnis-Ng (University of Auckland) and Mike Clearwater (Waikato University). Julia is supported by funding from the Marsden Fund.