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, Spain, 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 (see list below). I also developed, proposed, and established a few new classes on climate and environmental change.

From 2010 to 2023 I served as Subject Matter Editor for Ecosphere, the open‐access journal published by the Ecological Society of America. Starting in 2024 I have become the Associate Editor-in-Chief of the Vegetation Ecology track for that journal.

Teaching

  • Natural Resource Ecology (NRES  217): Spring 2018, Spring 2019, Spring 2020, Spring 2021, Spring 2022, Spring 2024
  • Mountain Ecoclimatology (NRES  355): Spring 2021, Spring 2022
  • Regional and Global Issues in Environmental Sciences (ENV/NRES 467): Spring 2017, Spring 2018, Spring 2019, Spring 2020
  • Autocorrelation in time and space: Applied analysis using R (NRES 730): Spring 2024

Honors and Awards

  • 2024-present Associate Editor-in-Chief, Ecosphere
  • 2022-present Invited Member, Academic Freedom Alliance, Princeton, New Jersey
  • 2007-present Senior Ecologist, Ecological Society of America (ESA) Board of Professional Certification
  • 2023 University of Bolu (Turkey) Honorary Award
  • 2023 Fulbright U.S. Senior Scholar Award, Commission for Cultural, Educational and Scientific Exchange between the USA and Spain and Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain
  • 2021 Tansley Review in New Phytologist (links to news articles and social media reports listed in Altmetrics place this publication in the top 5% of all scientific articles)
  • 2020 Research and Innovation Leadership Fellow, University of Nevada, Reno
  • 2018 Haury Visiting Scholar, Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research, The University of Arizona, Tucson
  • 2018 and 2013 Participant in the Expert Witness Training Academy, William Mitchell College of Law, Saint Paul,  Minnesota
  • 2017 Habilitation Committee Member, Fakultät Wissenschaftszentrum Weihenstephan für Ernährung, Landnutzung und Umwelt, Technische Universität München, Germany
  • 2015 Visiting Professor ("Poste Rouge"), Laboratoire d'Ecologie Fonctionnelle et Environnement (EcoLab), Université Toulouse III, France
  • 2014 Bullard Visiting Fellow, Harvard Forest, Petersham, Massachusetts
  • 2013 Visiting Scientist, Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research, University of Bern, Switzerland
  • 2013 CIRES Visiting Fellow, University of Colorado, Boulder
  • 2011 Fulbright Senior Specialist in Environmental Science, University of Tuscia, Viterbo, Italy
  • 2008 Hyung K. Shin Award for Excellence in Research, College of Science, University of Nevada, Reno
  • 2008 Outstanding Researcher Award, Mackay School of Earth Sciences and Engineering, University of Nevada, Reno
  • 2007 Foreign Member of the PhD Program in "Scienze e Tecnologie per la Gestione Forestale e Ambientale", University of Tuscia, Viterbo, Italy
  • 2007 Blaustein Visiting Fellowship, Stanford University, School of Earth Sciences
  • 2007 Guest Professorship, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Chair of Forest Ecology
  • 2006 National Academy of Sciences Committee
  • 2002 NSF Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award
  • 2001 AAG Paper of the Year Award
  • 1992 McGinnies Graduate Scholarship in Arid Lands Studies, University of Arizona, Tucson
  • 1992 Andrew E. Douglass Scholarship, Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research, University of Arizona, Tucson
  • 1985 Fulbright Award

Accomplishments

My long-term goal is to understand drivers of tree and forest growth in current, past, and future environments. I pursue this goal using instrumental and proxy records (mostly from tree rings), with an emphasis on field observations, numerical calibration, and automated sensors to bridge temporal and spatial scales. My experience and interests are in climate and forest dynamics, particularly in mountain watersheds. This places my work at the intersection between ecology, climatology, biogeography, and hydrology.

My dissertation work  on forest growth trends in Arizona had both regional and global relevance. Regionally, it provided evidence for the impact of fire suppression on the ecology of southwestern conifer forests, ultimately contributing to landscape conservation plans. Globally, it showed the importance of placing twentieth-century patterns into a longer historical perspective to disentangle the impact of land use changes (in this case, European settlement) from stand dynamics and other factors. From 1994 to 2000 I conducted research at Scripps Institution of Oceanography on past climate using proxy records from terrestrial tree rings and oceanic sediments (varves). At Scripps I also established a research program in dendroclimatology, and assembled the tree-ring laboratory that I then transferred to UNR. My recent studies deal with quantifying climate and tree growth variability from mountain ecosystems in the Great Basin of North America. Special emphasis is placed on understanding responses to disturbance (wildfire, land use changes) in relation to climate dynamics and to the distribution of woody species at the watershed level.

From 2008 to 2013 I was the statewide lead for the Ecological Change component of an NSF-EPSCoR project entitled “Nevada Infrastructure for Climate Change Science, Education and Outreach”, which was funded for a total of $15 million. As part of the research infrastructure funded by this large multi-investigator project, we established the Nevada Climate-ecohydrological Assessment Network (NevCAN), which includes valley-to-peak instrumental transects designed to measure changes in atmospheric, hydrologic, and ecologic variables, including the spatial and temporal processes that control, and are recorded by, wood growth of lower and upper treeline species.

Education

Liceo Scientifico, Piacenza, Italy, 1979 / Istituto Magistrale, Piacenza, Italy, 1980
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

A single-tree approach to determine climate-growth patterns of European beech and their seasonality in the species southern distribution area

2025

Agricultural and Forest Meteorology 371: art. 110644 (15 pp.), doi: 10.1016/j.agrformet.2025.110644

Serrano-Notivoli, R., J. Jevšenak, E.M. del Castillo, K. Cufar, N. Škrk-Dolar, G. Battipaglia, J.J. Camarero, A.H. Pain, A. Jump, R. Motta, P. Nola, M. Panayotov, I.C. Petritan, A. Popa, I. Popa, C.-C. Roibu, M. Svoboda, C. Zang, T. Zlatanov, A. Balzano, F. Biondi, and 25 other authors

Identifying drivers of non-stationary climate-growth relationships of European beech

2024

Science of The Total Environment, 937: art. 173321 (14 pp.), doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2024.173321

Leifsson, C., A. Buras, S. Klesse, C. Baittinger, B. Bat-Enerel, G. Battipaglia, F. Biondi, and 49 other authors

The multiple significant interaction terms in our model elucidate the complexity of European beech's drought sensitivity, which needs to be taken into consideration when assessing this species'...

The longevity of fruit trees in Basilicata (southern Italy): Implications for agricultural biodiversity conservation

2023

Land 12(3), art. 550 (17 pp.), doi: 10.3390/land12030550

Palli, J., M. Baliva, F. Biondi, L. Calcagnile, D. Cerbino, M. D'Elia, R. Muleo, A. Schettino, G. Quarta, N. Sassone, F. Solano, P. Zienna, and G. Piovesan

Some of the oldest scientifically dated fruit trees in the world: olive (680 ± 57 years), mulberry (647 ± 66 years), chestnut (636 ± 66 years), and pear (467 ± 89 years)....

On tree longevity

2021

New Phytologist 231: 1318–1337 (Tansley Review), doi: 10.1111/nph.17148

Piovesan, G. and F. Biondi

Identifying old trees helps with managing entire landscapes, and to revisit classic ecological theories. Among the most-downloaded and most-cited New Phytologist articles from 2020 and 2021....

From dendrochronology to allometry

2020

Forests 11 (2), art. 146 (17 pp.), doi: 10.3390/f11020146

Biondi, F.

How to use tree rings for much more than climate reconstructions....

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

Tree-ring based metrics for assessing old-growth forest naturalness

2017

Journal of Applied Ecology 54 (3): 737–749. DOI: 10.1111/1365-2664.12793

Di Filippo, A., F. Biondi, G. Piovesan, and E. Ziaco

The definition of "old-growth" forest stands needs to be revised and updated in light of modern scientific research results, especially from dendrochronology....