Rethinking the value of high wood density

dc.contributor.authorLarjavaara, Markku
dc.contributor.authorMuller-Landau, Helene C.
dc.date.accessioned2010-07-21T13:40:34Z
dc.date.available2010-07-21T13:40:34Z
dc.date.issued2010
dc.description.abstract1. Current thinking holds that wood density mediates a tradeoff between strength and economy of construction, with higher wood density providing higher strength but at higher cost. 2. Yet the further away wood fibres are from the central axis of the trunk, the more they increase the strength of the trunk; thus, a fat trunk of low-density wood can achieve greater strength at lower construction cost than a thin trunk of high-density wood. 3. What then are the countervailing advantages of high wood density? 4. We hypothesize that high wood density is associated with lower maintenance costs due to lower trunk surface area, as surface area correlates with maintenance respiration. 5. This advantage would be particularly important to long-lived trees and could in part explain why they tend to have high wood density. 6. High wood density has also been associated with lower risk of trunk breakage, xylem implosion and pathogen invasion, but we argue that these relationships are not causal and instead reflect correlated selection on other traits of value to long-lived trees. 7. This revaluation of the costs and benefits of high wood density has important implications for understanding tree life-history evolution, functional diversity, forest carbon stocks and the impacts of global change.
dc.format.extent701–705
dc.identifier0269-8463
dc.identifier.citationLarjavaara, Markku and Muller-Landau, Helene C. 2010. "<a href="https://repository.si.edu/handle/10088/9848">Rethinking the value of high wood density</a>." <em>Functional Ecology</em>, 24, (4) 701–705. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2435.2010.01698.x">https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2435.2010.01698.x</a>.
dc.identifier.issn0269-8463
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10088/9848
dc.relation.ispartofFunctional Ecology 24 (4)
dc.titleRethinking the value of high wood density
dc.typearticle
sro.description.unitSTRI
sro.identifier.doi10.1111/j.1365-2435.2010.01698.x
sro.identifier.itemID90561
sro.identifier.refworksID51945
sro.identifier.urlhttps://repository.si.edu/handle/10088/9848

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