Compilation of recent oak tree-ring chronology for southwestern Ukraine

Western Ukraine are largely forested, especially Transcarpatia with more than 50% of the land covered by forests. Despite this fact, Transcarpathian Ukraine belongs to the last European regions without a long and well replicated oak TRW chronology. The first step in compiling a new tree-ring width (TRW) chronology is to start with living trees; therefore, a new recent oak TRW chronology was assembled.
In this study, totally 336 oak samples from 16 oak forest stands and 1 sawmill from the Transcarpathian region have been collected and processed using standard dendrochronological methods. Samples were taken from sites with different altitudes, which ranged from 140 to 550 m a.s.l. 
296 well cross-dated TRW series have been used to compile a new recent oak TRW chronology for Transcarpathian Ukraine. The TRW chronology is 185 years long and covers the period 1836–2020. The analysis of the number of sapwood rings has also been performed since this number changes depending on the latitude and longitude and is crucial for exact dendroarchaeological dating. The mean number of sapwood rings has been calculated to be 14, ranging from 5 to 27.
The next steps will be to extend this recent TRW chronology with tree-ring series from historic wooden constructions, especially wooden churches, of which there are many in the region. The future chronology will enable further dendroarchaeological studies as well as dendroclimatological studies in this region.
The paper was supported by the grant no. IGA-LDF-22-IP-004  (the Internal Grant Agency FFWT MENDELU) and by the project SustES – Adaptation strategies for sustainable ecosystem services and food security under adverse environmental conditions (CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/16_019/0000797).