Lab 1 - Dendroclimatology

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University of South Florida *

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4114

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Geography

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Oct 30, 2023

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Lab 1 - Dendroclimatology Dendrochronology is simply known as the dating and study of the annual tree rings, or “growth layers” ( Tree Rings and Climate | Center for Science Education , n.d.). Dendrochronology is more specifically a tool utilized to assist in dating events and collecting information through variables in the environment, such as trees, that may be affected through seasonal influences (Coulthard & Smith, 2013). Similarly, dendroclimatology is the study of tree growth, however, it focuses on the relationship between tree growth and the climate. This information allows researchers to analyze what past climates look like over several hundred years and how they correlate to the data provided through the growth layers (Luckman, 2013). Dendroclimatology allows researchers to grasp a better understanding of the history of climates by extracting valuable data from the tree rings. Studying tree rings can reveal to scientists' different growth patterns, which could then be linked to variations or fluctuations in the climate’s temperature and precipitation, like shown in the lab we performed. We can even peak into the possible effects that increased CO2 emissions may have had on younger tree ring properties in recent decades (Jacoby & D’Arrigo, 1997) compared to that of older rings. Growth layers may also indicate to us if the sampled trees experienced seasons of stress, such as droughts, based on narrower rings or if the trees were growing in good conditions, thus possibly producing wider rings. These growth layers assist in the reconstruction of climate data and trends and, as a result, give insight into climate change research and possible solutions.

Using more than one core per tree and more than one tree per area is important in dendroclimatology for multiple reasons, one of the most important being that we want sample variability for research and validity. Tree growth can be impacted by many factors such as soil conditions, diseases, insects, species, location, microclimates, waterways, shade, and so on ( Tree Rings and Climate | Center for Science Education , n.d.). Taking multiple samples from the same tree and from numerous trees in the area allows for a more representative collection of data. One singular tree may even experience different environmental variations in its health over the time of its lifespan, so grabbing multiple core samples from even one tree can help reduce error. It’s vital to have a large range of data from a region so that we can have a better understanding of what the conditions in the area may have been like in the past. Our first graph, below, shows the trend for ring width vs. temperature, the correlation between the two calculated to -0.473874599. This small number tells me that there is a correlation between the two, but it is quite slight. You can see that the trend is showing a decrease in ring width as the temperature increases. In the second graph, showing the trend of ring width vs. precipitation, we see the correlation between the two to be even less at - 0.020846008. This tells me that the correlation between precipitation and the sampled trees is insignificant, and that there was not a drastic change in precipitation compared to ring width. My thoughts regarding why we got those smaller results and differing correlations is that with the increase in temperature along with the linear trend in precipitation, the sampled trees may have experienced dryer seasons thus creating smaller tree rings. If there was an increase in precipitation to balance the increase in temperature, we may have seen different results in tree ring size. It also depends on if these dryer periods occurred during the pre- and early growing season, as this has a large effect on tree growth (Sun et al., 2022).

After performing the lab and absorbing the information, I can see that there may be a few advantages and disadvantages to dendroclimatology. First, as far as disadvantages, dendroclimatology has a few limitations. Collecting adequate samples must take skill, time, a good geographic coverage. If samples are inadequate, there could be instances of false data, whether that be from the poorly grabbed sample, not grabbing enough, or from not identifying false rings. There are also limitations in the timeline that you can see, the data is not an extremely extensive look into the past and the rings show the growth over an entire growing

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season but do not show the minute changes in the climate during that growing season (New World Encyclopedia, 2022). The ultimate advantage to this technique is that, collectively, tree rings measurements can represent a vast network of information for looking into past climates of local areas or even globally.

References Coulthard, B. L., & Smith, D. J. (2013, January 1). DENDROCHRONOLOGY (S. A. Elias & C. J. Mock, Eds.). ScienceDirect; Elsevier. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/B9780444536433003551 Dendroclimatology. (2022, July 27). New World Encyclopedia, Retrieved 01:09, September 16, 2023, from https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/p/index.php?title=Dendroclimatology&oldid=10 74063. Jacoby, G. C., & D’Arrigo, R. D. (1997). Tree rings, carbon dioxide, and climatic change. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , 94 (16), 8350 – 8353. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.94.16.8350 Luckman, B. H. (2013, January 1). DENDROCLIMATOLOGY (S. A. Elias & C. J. Mock, Eds.). ScienceDirect; Elsevier. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/B978044453643300354X Sun, C., Li, Q., Liu, Y., Song, H., Fang, C., Cai, Q., Ren, M., Ye, Y., Liu, R., & Sun, J. (2022). Tree rings reveal changes in the temperature pattern in eastern China before and during the Anthropocene. Environmental Research Letters , 17 (12), 124034. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/aca68e

Tree Rings and Climate | Center for Science Education . (n.d.). Scied.ucar.edu. Retrieved September 15, 2023, from https://scied.ucar.edu/learning-zone/how-climate-works/tree- rings-and-climate#:~:text=Collecting%20core%20samples%20from%20many

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