Combining conventional tree-ring measurements with wood anatomy and strontium isotope analyses enables dendroprovenancing at the local scale.

Dendroprovenancing provides critical information regarding the origin of wood, allowing further insights into economic exploitation strategies and source regions of timber products. Traditionally, dendroprovenancing relies on pattern-matching of tree rings, but its spatial resolution is limited by the geographical coverage of species-specific chronologies available for crossdating and, in the case of short-distance trades, by scarce environmental variability. Here, we present an approach to provenance timber with high spatial resolution from forested areas that have been exploited intensively throughout history, with the aim to understand the sustainability of the various woodland management practices used to supply timber products. To this end, we combined tree-ring width (TRW), wood anatomical and geochemical analyses in addition to multivariate statistical validation procedures to trace the origin of living oak trees (Quercus robur) sampled in four stands located within a 30-km radius around the city of Limoges (Haute-Vienne, France). We demonstrate that TRW and wood anatomical variables (and in particular cell density) robustly discriminate the eastern from the western site, while failing to trace the origin of trees from the northern and southern sites. Here, strontium isotopic ratios (87Sr/86Sr) and Ca concentrations identify clusters of trees which could not be identified with TRW or wood anatomy. Ultimately, our study demonstrates that the coupling of wood anatomy with geochemical signatures allows to correctly pinpoint the origin of trees. Given the small geographic scale of our study and the limited differences in elevation and climate between study sites, our results are particularly promising for future dendroprovenancing studies. We thus conclude that the combination of multiple approaches will not only increase the accuracy of dendroprovenancing studies at local scales, but could also be implemented at much larger scales to identify trends in historic timber supply throughout Europe.

Geometry-modulated dipole polarizability of the two-dimensional Mott-Wannier excitons in gate-defined anisotropic quantum dot.

A theoretical investigation on neutral excitons confined to a mono-layer (ML) semiconductor transition metal dichalcogenide (TMDC) materials under the influence of elliptically deformed gate induced confining potential is presented. It has been shown that the anisotropy of the confinement induces the anisotropy of linear response of the system on in-plane external electric field. The linear response is expressed in terms of principal moments of the static dipole polarizability tensor. In this manner the direction-dependent polarizability of the system can be fully controlled by tuning the parameters of gate-induced confining potential. The components of the polarizability tensor are determined using finite-field method based on the exact diagonalization of the electron-hole Hamiltonian including confining potential, Coulomb electron-hole interaction and an external electric field, within effective mass approximation, close to the K-points of the first Brillouin zone of a single-layer MX[Formula: see text] material. The useful scaling relations for energies and dipole polarizabilities as functions of material parameters have been found. The influence of the anisotropy of the confining potential on correlated behavior of charge distribution inside the neutral system has also been demonstrated.

Electron transport properties of graphene quantum dots with non-centro-symmetric Gaussian deformation.

A theoretical investigation on electron transport properties of rectangular graphene quantum dots (GQDs) with non-centro-symmetric out-of-plane Gaussian deformation of elliptic type is presented. Different levels of deformation are explored to estimate system geometry optimal for potential electronic applications. Electronic properties of deformed GQDs are studied in terms of local density of states (LDOS), band-gap opening and equilibrium ballistic conductance. In particular, it was observed that the symmetry of spatial LDOS structure is directly linked with the symmetry of properly defined local strain field (LSF) map, for a wide energy range. The relationship confirms qualitatively predictions obtained on the basis of the concept of a pseudomagnetic field, used in continuum models of graphene, including strain induced effects. The conductance spectra of deformed GQD as a device connected to semi-infinite graphene armchair nanoribbons as reservoirs are studied in a frame of tight-binding (TB) model in combination with non-equilibrium Green's-functions technique (NEGF).