Simon Engeler successfully defended his master's thesis!
We congratulate Simon for successfully defending his master's thesis and for passing his exam on Feb 16th 2023. In his thesis, Simon tested if spruce trees that died in the 2018 drought at our SCC II research site were different from trees in the same population that survived the drought. Simon found that trees that died grew less well for years prior to the drought event than trees that survived. Using tree ring carbon and oxygen isotopes he could show that the poor growth in the trees that died was because these trees had generally less access to water than trees that survived the drought. This thesis is an interesting piece of science that shows that trees that suffer mortality during a drought event do not die randomly in a population but are predisposed to mortality because of the poor microhabitat that they grew in.