Community Forestry group and Tree Corps – a new program run out of the Holden Arboretum visited the Tree Ring Lab to learn a bit about tree-sampling and the information contained in the tree records.
Coring a white oak that is slated for removal – we learned a lot from the group. For example, Volcano munching was a topic of conversation a concept we which were not aware.
More coring – Nick then took the group to the wood shop and lab.
Mounting the cores – we look forward to working with the group next year. The Tree Corp Program in its inaugural year seemed a major success – congratulations.
Summer researchers working in the Tree Ring Lab returned to Stebbin’s Gulch in late May to collect more chestnut oak samples. This increased replication helps us to strengthen our various hypotheses made from the interpretation of our findings.
Our views of the canopy.Team members recording measurements and extracting a core from this living chestnut oak.Kendra and Victoria looking at a giant burl on one of the sampled trees.Team members coring an old chestnut oak along the gulch reaching high into the canopy.
This information is useful in mapping out land use changes in Northeast Ohio. The team identified an abrupt increase in ring width around 1840. They attributed this rise to decreased competition from logging which coincides with the time of most significant settlement in the area.
Read more about their conclusions in the official dendroclimatological report here.
Brown’s Lake Bog, located near Shreve in Wayne County, Ohio, is a nature preserve and National Natural Landmark that was established in the 1960’s. College of Wooster students have been involved in several past projects at Browns Lake Bog including sediment coring and ice drilling. Last week, the 2018 AMRE students ventured to this local spot to collect tree cores from some red and white oaks in order to perform some climate analysis for the Nature Conservancy and the Friends of Brown’s Lake Bog.
Brown’s Lake Bog is one of a few remaining peatland sites across Ohio that contains an open kettle lake surrounded by a floating sphagnum moss mat. These features are glacial relicts and the knolls surrounding the bog are glacially-formed hills called kames.
This field site is known for its diverse and rare plant community which thrives in the bog’s special acidic and nutrient-poor environment. More than twenty rare plant species can be found here. The carnivorous Northern Pitcher Plant (Sarracenia purpurea) is one of the rare species that attracts bog visitors.
After checking out the kettle lake, the tree ring lab group hiked the short trail to reach the trees sitting on top of the kames. The AMRE students sampled 6 of the oldest white and red oak trees.
AMRE students with a sampled tree (Left to right: Alexis Lanier ’20, Juwan Shabazz ’19, and Kendra Devereux ’21)The carnivorous Northern Pitcher Plant (Sarracenia purpurea) receives nutrients by trapping insects in its fluid-filled cavities.The AMRE students getting coring tips from Nick.Extracting a fresh oak core on top of the kame at Brown’s Lake Bog.Juwan, Kendra, and Arrow sitting on a fallen oak.
Upon returning to the lab, the group mounted up the fresh cores and prepared them for counting and measuring ring widths. This week, Kendra and Alexis are working to update the local chronology and perform various correlations with the data. The final product will be an official climate analysis report.
The map below displays a positive correlation between ring width and precipitation during the months of June and July in the local Wooster area. These months displayed the highest p values and correlations (as shown in the bar graph), which is why these months were selected while creating the map using Climate Explorer. A positive correlation suggests that the more it rained, the better the trees grew (this is expressed in wider ring widths).
Stay tuned for more of their results!
Correlation between ring width at Brown’s Lake Bog and precipitation records.
One of Kendra’s initial correlation maps created with Climate Explorer.
This summer, students through the AMRE program will be working in the lab doing historical dating. Kendra Devereux, Alexis Lanier, and Juwan Shabazz will be working with clients to date local barns, update chronologies, and study past climate.
Two additional students are working in the lab with data collected from Columbia Glacier in Prince William Sound, Alaska. Josh Charlton and Victoria Race will be helping out the AMRE students and also spending time with data collected from Columbia Glacier. Josh is working on constructing a model of the rapidly retreating Columbia Glacier and Victoria will be looking more closely at Blue Intensity data obtained from tree cores collected in Columbia Bay.
Work started earlier this week and the group went out in the field yesterday for the first time together. We headed up North to the Holden Arboretum to collect core samples from living Chestnut Oak trees in Stebbins Gulch.
2018 “Tree Huggers” From left to right: Victoria Race, Kendra Devereux, Alexis Lanier, Josh Charleton, and Juwan ShabazzAlexis removing tree borer after extracting core from this chestnut oak.Taking some measurements along with a few cores from this living chestnut oak.Juwan and Kendra showing off their extracted cores.Dr. Wiles checking the budding leaves of a chestnut oak.One of our freshly extracted cores.
Today we finished mounting the cores and will begin dating them after they have been sanded. These samples will be used to update the chronology from the Holden Arboretum which has not been updated in several decades. We plan on looking specifically at precipitation data extracted from these cores and then writing an official report of our findings for the researchers at Holden.
Chestnut oak cores collected from Stebbins Gulch before mounting process.Close-up of a damp core before mounting.
In the coming weeks, the group will be working on various projects including the Holden chronology, barn dating, and Columbia Glacier data. Stay tuned for updates!!
You can also follow the Geology Club instagram for more information and photos along with the departmental Facebook page.
Two alumni of the Wooster Tree Ring Lab and Wooster Geology, Clara Deck (’17, now at the University of Maine studying ice sheets) and Sarah Frederick (’15, now at The University of Arizona studying drought and streamflow) together with Greg and Nick, and colleagues in the US and Russia published a new study on tree growth and climate in Kamchatka, Fareast Russia. This is part of a special edition of the Journal Forests. The group has donated the data in to the InternationalTree Ring Databank.
Photo below shows some of the coauthors at the base of Tobalchik Volcano on the Kamchatka Peninsula.
Learning about environmental change from tree rings
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