Franco biondi

Franco Biondi

Professor, Ecoclimatology/Tree Rings

Summary

I am a tree biologist with a specialty in dendroecology, which is the study of tree rings and wood formation to infer ecological changes. In collaboration with students and colleagues, I have studied tree-dominated landscapes in the Western USA, Mexico, and southern Europe. I am now involved in grant-funded projects aimed at understanding the environmental drivers of intra-annual tree-ring features. Studies performed by DendroLab personnel are focused on examining the connection between wood form and function in conifer species of the western US. We use automated point dendrometers, wood anatomy, and cellular phenology to uncover the exquisitely intricate connections between dendrochronology, wood science, tree physiology, forest ecology, mensuration, and allometry. These new activities also include domestic and international collaborations, the latter with scientists in Canada, Germany, France, Finland, Switzerland, and Italy.

My teaching responsibilities are closely tied to my research experience and interests. At UNR I have taught several courses, from introductory undergraduate classes to graduate seminars. I also developed, proposed, and established a few new classes on climate and environmental change.

Since 2010 I have served as Subject Matter Editor for Ecosphere, the open‐access journal published by the Ecological Society of America. I am also Specialty Chief Editor for the Paleoecology section of Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution.

Education

Laurea, University of Florence, Italy, 1985
M.S., University of Arizona, Tucson, 1987
Ph.D., University of Arizona, Tucson, 1994

Publications

Book Chapter(s)

Dendrochronology, Volcanic Eruptions

2015

W.J. Rink and J.W. Thompson (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Scientific Dating Methods. Springer-Verlag, Berlin-Heidelberg, Germany; pp. 221-227. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6326-5_24-1

Biondi, F.

Journals

Inter-specific transpiration differences between aspen, spruce, and pine in a sky-island ecosystem of the North American Great Basin

2021

Forest Ecology and Management (accepted)

Liu, X. and F. Biondi

On tree longevity

2021

New Phytologist, Tansley Review (online, 20 pp.), doi: 10.1111/nph.17148

Piovesan, G. and F. Biondi

Climatically controlled reproduction drives inter-annual growth variability in a temperate tree species

2018

Ecology Letters 21(12): 1833-1844. doi: 10.1111/ele.13158

Hacket-Pain, A.J., D. Ascoli, G. Vacchiano, F. Biondi, L. Cavin, M. Conedera, I. Drobyshev , I. Dorado Liñán, A.D. Friend, M. Grabner, C. Hartl, J. Kreyling, F. Lebourgeois, T. Levanic, A. Menzel, E. van der Maaten, M. van der Maaten-Theunissen, L. Muffler, R. Motta, C.-C. Roibu, I. Popa , T. Scharnweber, R. Weigel, M. Wilmking, and C. Zang

Global patterns of drought recovery

2017

Nature 548, 202–205 (10 August 2017). doi:10.1038/nature23021

Schwalm, C.R., W.R.L. Anderegg, A.M. Michalak, J.B. Fisher, F. Biondi, G. Koch, M. Litvak, K. Ogle, J.D. Shaw, A. Wolf, D.N. Huntzinger, K. Schaefer, R. Cook, Y. Wei, Y. Fang, D. Hayes, M. Huang, A. Jain, and H. Tian