2.4.4 Disturbance history
These data have previously been used to reconstruct disturbance
histories throughout the Carpathians (for details, see Svoboda et al
2014; Schurman et al. 2018). In brief, tree growth series are scanned
for decadal-scale growth rate anomalies indicative of the rapid
reductions in competition that occur following disturbance. Gap sizes
created by the historical event are inferred from the present canopy
area of the released individual. Thus, if multiple co-occurring
individuals were released during the same year, then their collective
canopy areas are summed to estimate the gap fraction created by the
disturbance event in a given year. For the present analysis, we
extracted four disturbance history variables for each plot: the severity
and time elapsed since each inventory plot’s most severe disturbance
(used in our longer-term analysis of synchrony) and the severity and
time elapsed since each inventory plot’s most recent disturbance (used
in our analysis of near-term mean BAIs).