Ukrainian Journal of Forest and Wood Science

It is identified that since the beginning of the 19th century, the degradation of pine stands has acquired a huge scale on all continents. In Ukraine, according to the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources of Ukraine, the average annual temperature has increased by more than 2°C since the beginning of the 20th century, in particular, by 1.2°C for the last 30 years. In recent years, the number of days with maximum summer temperatures is more than 35°C and 40°C has almost doubled, meaning the extreme weather events are intensifying. In most parts of Ukraine, there is already a tendency to increase droughts and fire danger, repeating the years during which plantings will be exposed to water stress, pest damage, and degradation of forest ecosystems in general due to the increase in the number and duration of hot periods. It was determined that dendrochronological methods are used to investigate the relationship between climate change and radial pine growth. The main methods for investigating radial increment are to take cores at a height of 1.3 m from two opposite radii, to exclude the influence of random factors on the radial increment. The width of year rings is determined using installations for dendrochronological studies, with automatic data recording. These values of annual rings are processed according to the programmes of the International Tree Ring Data Bank (ITRDB). A specialised COFECHA programme is used to synchronise the series with setting the calendar year of formation of each year’s growth. It was identified that the growth of Scots pine is limited by the humidification of the climate and the presence of sufficient moisture in the soil, but in the case of extreme temperatures, a negative trend towards drying out of plantings still remains

dendrochronology, pathological processes, climate change, pine, radial increment