Tree-ring research studies depend heavily on samples, but the connection to the sampling theory remains loose. Tree-ring studies need to be based on samples of restrained size for several reasons: measuring tree-ring features remains labour-intensive, costly, and sampling cannot be seen as totally free of consequences for trees. Sampling, the art of selecting observational units to produce population-level estimates, comes with constraints that, when not respected, lead to biases and loss ...

Tree-ring time series provide long-term, annually resolved information on the growth of individual trees. However, public tree-ring archives contain a considerable portion of data collected from trees that have been selected with specific research questions in mind (e.g., for climate reconstruction).  This makes these archives a biased representation of the sensitivity of forest ecosystems to ongoing climate variation (e.g. temperature, precipitation), including non-stationarity (i.e....