Bulk wood density measurements are recognized for their utility in ecology, industry, and biomass estimations. In tree-ring research, microdensitometric techniques are widely used, but their ability to determine the correct central tendency has been questioned. Though rarely used, it may be possible to use bulk wood density as a tool to check the accuracy of and even correct microdensitometric measurements. Since measuring bulk wood density in parallel with X-ray densitometry is quickly and easily done, we suspect that its omission is largely due to a lack of awareness of the procedure and/or its importance. In this study, we describe a simple protocol for measuring bulk wood density tailored for tree-ring researchers and demonstrate a few possible applications. To implement real-world examples of the applications, we used a sample of existing X-ray and Blue Intensity (BI) measurements from 127 living and dead Pinus sylvestris trees from northern Sweden to produce new measurements of bulk wood density.

We can confirm that the central tendency in this sample material is offset using X-ray densitometry and that the diagnosis and correction of X-ray density is easily done using bulk wood density in linear transfer functions. However, this approach was not suitable for our BI measurements due to heavy discoloration. Nevertheless, we were able to use bulk wood density to diagnose and improve the use of deltaBI (latewood BI – earlywood BI) with regard to its overall trends and multi-centennial variability in a dendroclimatological application. Moreover, we experimented with percent of latewood width, scaled with bulk wood density, as a time- and cost-effective proxy for annual ring density. Although our reconstruction only explains about half of the variation in ring density, it is most likely superior to using fixed literature values of density in allometric equations aimed at biomass estimations.

With this study, we hope to raise new awareness regarding the versatility and importance of bulk wood density for dendrochronology by demonstrating its simplicity, relevance, and applicability.

散装木材密度测量因其在生态学、工业和生物量估算中的实用性而受到认可。在树木年轮研究中，微光密度技术被广泛使用，但它们确定正确集中趋势的能力受到质疑。虽然很少使用，但可以使用散装木材密度作为工具来检查甚至正确的微密度测量的准确性。由于与 X 射线密度计并行测量散装木材密度既快速又容易，我们怀疑它的遗漏主要是由于缺乏对程序和/或其重要性的认识。在这项研究中，我们描述了一个简单的协议，用于测量为树轮研究人员量身定制的散装木材密度，并展示了一些可能的应用。要实现应用程序的实际示例，来自瑞典北部的樟子松树可产生散装木材密度的新测量值。

我们可以确认使用 X 射线密度测定法抵消了该样品材料的中心趋势，并且使用线性传递函数中的松散木密度可以轻松完成 X 射线密度的诊断和校正。然而，由于严重变色，这种方法不适合我们的 BI 测量。尽管如此，我们还是能够使用散装木材密度来诊断和改进 deltaBI（晚材 BI – 早材 BI）在树木气候学应用中的整体趋势和百年变化性的使用。此外，我们试验了晚材宽度的百分比，与散装木材密度成比例，作为年轮密度的时间和成本效益代理。虽然我们的重建只解释了环密度变化的一半左右，

通过这项研究，我们希望通过展示其简单性、相关性和适用性来提高人们对松散木材密度对树木年代学的多功能性和重要性的新认识。