G. Arx, M. Carrer
2014
Citations
17
Influential Citations
182
Citations
Quality indicators
Journal
Dendrochronologia
Abstract
Abstract Measurements of tree-ring features (ring width, density, isotopes concentration, etc.) are well-established proxies of environmental variability and, in particular, climate fluctuation at local, regional and continental scales. In recent years, tree-ring anatomical structure (conduit size, density, cell wall thickness, ray abundance, etc.) has been recognized as a novel source of valuable ecological information. However, despite the high potential interest, these kinds of investigations have been significantly constrained by the methodological limitations and time-consuming procedures of data collection. In this paper, we present ROXAS: an image analysis tool specifically designed to automatically recognize and measure conduit lumen area and calculate reliable statistics in a reasonable amount of time. With ROXAS, many of the aforementioned limitations in analyzing tree-ring anatomical structure can potentially be overcome. While ROXAS was previously used exclusively for angiosperm analysis, we demonstrate in this paper for the first time how it can also be used to analyze an entire sample of a conifer wood. The use of ROXAS for the analysis of conifer anatomy is exemplified by a 120-year long Pinus leucodermis sample including about 75,000 tracheid cells. The results of ROXAS fully automatic tracheid detection are compared to the results obtained after using in-built manual editing capabilities. While both approaches proved to be efficient, the quality of the fully automatic tracheid detection is found to be generally sufficient for most research applications.