I am currently working on assessing whether and to what extent remotely sensed, satellite-based soil moisture products are suitable tools for tracking temporal tree growth dynamics in increasingly water-limited forests at different spatio-temporal scales in Eurasia. To achieve this, the following main objectives are defined:
1) Downscaling of the ESA CCISM combined product to a target resolution of 1 km, as a fundamental step for establishing long-term (e.g. decades) functional dependencies of trees on soil moisture changes;
2) Determine patterns of dependence of intra- and inter-annual radial growth dynamics on remotely sensed soil water availability in dry forests of different thermal regimes for the most widespread conifer in the Northern Hemisphere (Pinus sylvestris);
3) Describe the magnitude and temporal evolution of soil water limitation on tree radial growth of representative Eurasian forest tree species over the last four decades based on remotely sensed SM products.