Dating of rockfall damage in trees yields insights into meteorological triggers of process activity in the French Alps

Rockfall release is a rather unpredictable process. As a result, the occurrence of rockfall often threatens humans and (infra)structures. The assessment of potential drivers of rockfall activity therefore remains a major challenge, even if the relative influence of rainfall, snowmelt, or freeze thaw cycles has long been identified in short‐term monitoring projects. In the absence of longer‐term assessments of rockfall triggers and possible changes thereof, our knowledge of rockfall dynamics remains still lacunary as a result of the persisting scarcity of exhaustive and precise rockfall databases. Over the last decades, several studies have employed growth disturbances (GDs) in tree‐ring series to reconstruct rockfall activity. Paradoxically, these series were only rarely compared to meteorological records. In this study, we capitalize on the homogeneity of a centennial‐old reforestation plot to develop two reconstructions – R1 including only growth suppressions, and R2 based on injuries – with limited biases related to decreasing sample size and changes in exposed diameters back in time. By doing so, our study also and quite clearly highlights the large potential that protection forests have in terms of yielding reliable, multidecadal rockfall reconstructions. From a methodological perspective, we find no synchronicity between R1 and R2, as well as an absence of meteorological controls on rockfall processes in R1. This observation pleads for a careful selection of GDs in future reconstructions. In terms of process dynamics, we demonstrate that summer intense rainfall events (>10 mm day−1) are the main drivers for rockfall activity at our study site. Despite the stringency of our detection procedure, correlations between rockfall activity and meteorological variables remain comparable to those reported in previous studies, as a result of the complexity and multiplicity of triggering factors. We therefore call for a more systematic coupling of tree‐ring analysis with rockfall and microclimatic monitoring in future studies. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.