Henrik Hartmann

Postdoc

Phone:+49 (0)3641 - 576294
Email:hhart(at)bgc-jena.mpg.de
Room:C1.024


Education

  • Postoc, Max-Planck Institut for Biogeochemistry, Jena, Germany, 2009 -
  • Ph.D., UQAM, 2005 - 2008
  • M.Sc., UQAM, 2003 - 2004 (direct switch to Ph.D.)
  • B.F.Sc., Université de Moncton (2003)



About myself and my research interests

I was born and raised in Germany but immigrated to Canada in 1992. After several years of a self-chosen ‘exile’ in the Canadian wilderness, I decided that modern life wasn’t too bad after all.

Because I was living in a rural community - which depended completely on the forest and its products - I quickly became interested in forests as living environments. However, after completing a forestry technician training and a bachelor’s degree in forest science, I recognized that attempting to understand forest ecosystems from a management perspective was not satisfying for me and I decided to pursue my education. I started a M.Sc in Biology at UQAM (Université du Québec à Montréal) in Montreal (Canada) but switched one year later directly to a Ph.D., also at UQAM.

During my postgraduate studies, I investigated growth and physiological responses of residual sugar maple trees to disturbances from partial (selection) harvest. Selection harvested sugar maple forests had been monitored over several years following treatment and higher than expected mortality rates had been observed. It had been suggested that harvest disturbances such as soil compaction, root damage, and sudden exposure to direct sunlight may have been be the causal link to this mortality.

However, the results of my study could not demonstrate any direct link between harvest disturbances and increased mortality in the studied stands. Instead, I showed that natural disturbances (insect defoliation) played a much more important role in sugar maple mortality. More interestingly, the study showed that although all trees had been defoliated during past epidemic events some trees had been much more negatively affected by defoliation than others. The surviving trees seemed to have better resisted or coped with herbivory than trees that died but the mechanisms behind this resistance remained obscure. Hence, although my doctoral research allowed answering some questions (see publications below), many more had been raised.

During my Ph.D. I did- upon invitation from Dr. Christian Wirth - carbon isotope analyses at the BGC (see publication #4). During this collaboration with Dr. Wirth the idea of pursuing my research at the BGC crystallized. Now this idea has become reality and I am looking forward to finding the answers to these many, many questions about how environmental stresses affect tree physiology and mortality mechanisms.

I will attack these questions in a broader and more fundamental way than during my Ph.D. In collaboration with Christian I intend to study physiological responses of trees with dissimilar stress resistances to the impact of different disturbances. More specifically, I will investigate retrospectively the physiological responses of several conifer tree species from Siberia to fire damage as well as responses of deciduous trees from the Hainich forest to drought and stress reactions of conifers from Bavarian forests to defoliation. Furthermore, I plan to broaden the scope of my studies with the use of manipulative experiments. These experiments will focus on patterns and mechanisms of resource allocation in trees in response to induced stress. With this fundamental approach, we should be able to dismantle some of the enigmas surrounding physiological tree stress responses as well as mortality mechanisms.


Publications

Scientific journals

  1. Hartmann, H.(Submitted) Will a 385 million year-struggle for light become a struggle for carbon? -How trees may cope with more frequent climate change-type drought events. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment.
  2. Hartmann, H., Daoust, G., Bigué, B. and Messier, C. (in review) Negative or positive effects of plantation and intensive forestry: a matter of scale. Forestry Chronicle.
  3. Hartmann, H. and Messier, C. (in review) Natural and anthropogenic disturbance alter competitive interactions in sugar maple. OIKOS.
  4. Hartmann, H., Beaudet, M., Mazerolle, M. and Messier, C. (2009) Sugar maple (Acer saccharum Marsh.) growth is influenced by close conspecifics and skid trail proximity following selection harvest. Forest Ecology and Management 258: 823-831. DOI:10.1016/j.foreco.2009.05.028 Link
  5. Hartmann, H., Wirth, C., Messier, C. and Berninger, F. (2008) Effects of above and below ground partial harvest disturbance on residual sugar maple growth and water stress. Tree Physiology 28: 1851–1862. pdf
  6. Hartmann, H. and Messier, C. (2008) The role of forest tent caterpillar defoliations and partial harvest in the decline and death of sugar maple. Annals of Botany 102: 377-387. pdf ContentSelect
  7. Hartmann, H., Messier, C. and Beaudet, M. (2008) Using longitudinal survival probabilities to test field vigour estimates in sugar maple (Acer saccharum Marsh.). Forest Ecology and Management 256: 1771–1779. pdf
  8. Hartmann, H., Messier, C. and Beaudet, M. (2007) Improving tree mortality models by accounting for environmental influences. Canadian Journal of Forest Research 37(11): 2106-2114. pdf
  9. Nolet, P., Hartmann, H., Bouffard, D. and Doyon, F. (2007) Predicted and observed sugar maple mortality in relation to site quality indicators. Northern Journal of Applied Forestry 24(4): 258-264. Link

Dissertation

  • Hartmann, H. (2008) Identifying stress factors in sugar maple decline and mortality following partial harvest: analyzing tree growth, vigour and water status. Université du Québec à Montreal. 156p. pdf

Other publications

  1. Hartmann, H., Beaulieu, J., Daoust, G. (2002) La diversité biologique et la foresterie de plantations. Literature revue. Canadian Forest Service, Laurentian Forestry Centre. 119p. 372ref.
  2. Hartmann, H., Daoust, G. (2002) Mesurage et évaluation, 31 ans après plantation, du test de provenance E277 d’épinette de Norvège établi à la Station forestière de Valcartier, Qc. Technical report. Canadian Forest Service, Laurentian Forestry Centre. 46p. 32ref.

Peer reviews

  1. Journal of Applied Ecology (2009-00383, 2009)
  2. Ecology (08-1152, 2008)
  3. Canadian Journal of Forest Research (08-373, 2008)
  4. Canadian Journal of Forest Research (08-145, 2008)



Presentations and posters

Presentations

  1. Hartmann, H., Messier, C. and Beaudet, M. (2008) Role of natural and anthropogenic stresses in tree decline and death. ESA annual meeting, Milwaukee, USA, August 2008.
  2. Hartmann, H., Messier, C. and Beaudet, M. (2007) Does the visual assessment of tree vigor in the selection system reflect actual tree survival probabilities? North American Forest Ecology Workshop, Vancouver, BC, Canada, June 2007.
  3. Hartmann, H., Messier, C. and Beaudet, M. (2006) Truncating live growth series for mortality probability estimations. 7th International Conference on Dendrochronology, Beijing, China, Juin 2006 and Eastern CANUSA conference, Quebec, Canada, October 2006.
  4. Hartmann, H., Messier, C. and Beaudet, M. (2005) Mortality of mature Sugar maple following selection harvest in the northern hardwoods of Quebec, Canada. ESA-Intelcol Joint Meeting, Montreal, Quebec, August 2005.
  5. Hartmann, H., Messier, C. and Beaudet, M. (2005) Growth response of mature Sugar maple and yellow birch following selection harvest in the northern hardwoods of Québec, Canada. North American Forest Ecology Workshop, Aylmer, Quebec, Canada, June 2005.
  6. Hartmann, H., Beaudet, M. , Kneeshaw, D., Béland, M., Messier, C., Kobe, R. (2003) Croissance et mortalité juvénile du bouleau jaune (Betula alleghaniensis Britton) en fonction de la disponibilité de lumière. Scientific competition (ACFAS-Acadie), winner in the undergraduate category Natural sciences and Engineering. March 2003.

Posters

  1. Hartmann, H., Messier, C. and Beaudet, M. (2007) Does the visual assessment of tree vigor in the selection system reflect actual tree survival probabilities? Annual conference of the Centre of Forest Research, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, March 2007.