Category Archives: Projects

Dating Historical Structures, Ohio, Projects

Summer research in the COW Tree Ring Lab

This summer, several students will be working in the COW Tree Ring Lab on several different projects. Josh Charlton, Eduardo Luna, and Emily Randall have already been hard at work conducting research on Alaska Yellow Cedar trees. Emily has been looking at ring widths and correlating them with climate variables at Tlingit Point, Alaska, while Josh has been measuring their blue intensity. Both are working on a Keck Gateway project on tree dating.

Josh (left) and Emily (right) in the lab annex.

Until today, Eduardo Luna was also in the lab, working with cores from Kamchatka and Alaska. He has also been our resident expert in Adobe Illustrator for producing figures to explain our research — which is very important work.

The final member of our lab right now is me, Brandon Bell. I’ve been working to design this new website for the Tree Ring Lab, with the help of Dr. Breitenbucher, who is the director of Educational Technology at the College. My work station is actually in the center of the photo above.

Yesterday, however, we all went out to do what the Tree Ring Lab does best — core and date trees. We went to the Wayne County Historical Society on Bowman Ave. in order to core two bald cypress trees in front of the Beall House. We were asked to find their date for the Historical Society and for the City of Wooster — the latter is preparing a publication on old or significant trees in the city.

Seeing them for the first time, we were impressed at just how large they were in diameter — although only the tree rings themselves can tell us the tree’s actual age.

The two bald cypress trees in front of the Beall House, with Josh Charlton to the left.

The trees themselves were quite difficult to core. We had to use our longer, blue-colored cores due to the larger diameter of these trees. At one point, we even had to climb on a ladder to get cores from higher on the tree. As it turns out, these particular trees had rot near the base, which made it hard to find a core we could use to date the trees.

Eduardo Luna coring near the base of the of the bald cypress trees, with Brandon Bell (L) and Emily Randall (R) behind him.

Overall, though, it was nice to get out of the lab and core. The lab will examine the cores we collected yesterday in the near future.

All of us standing in front of the Beall House — (L to R) Josh Charlton, Brandon Bell, Emily Randall, Nick Wiesenberg, and Eduardo Luna.

In the coming weeks, all of us are going on research trips for Geology — In fact, Eduardo just left for Utah. Emily will also be going to Utah in a couple of weeks, and Josh will join Dr. Wiles and Nick Wiesenberg for research in Alaska. I’ll leave next Tuesday for San Francisco, California for my Independent Study research.

Despite this, it looks like it will be a full summer of research for the Tree Ring Lab. I’ve heard that, after we are gone in late June, another crew of students will come to the Tree Ring Lab to take our places in July. Stay tuned for the next updates on this research, and the launch of our new website.

 

 

Climate Change, Dating Historical Structures, Ohio, Projects

Dating the Tracy House (Apple Creek, OH)

Climate Change 2017 is pleased to have been asked to date the Tracy House, Apple Creek Ohio. The log house/cabin is now stored in the soon to be Apple Creek Community Center and Library will be reassembled this coming summer. The date is unambiguous and most of the timber was cut after the growing season of 1826 and it is likely that the house was originally constructed in 1827, one of the first to be built in the East Union Township. A copy of our report can be found here.

Maddie cores an old growth living tree to help assemble a calendar dated tree ring chronology.
Dean extracts a core from a beam of the Tracy House under the watchful eye of Annette – the TA, as Conner looks on.
Extracting a core being careful to preserve the outer ring of the core (don’t bend the extractor John).
Another successful core extracted.

Originally posted to the Wooster Geologists blog.

Climate Change, Ohio, Projects

Coring Brown’s Lake Bog

Two class projects kick off the Climate Change 2017 course. The first deals with tree-ring dating (dendrochronology, blog post coming soon) of historical structures and then analyzing the tree-rings for their climate significance. The second is is shown below and it concerned with analyzing sediment cores from Browns Lake Bog that document climate variability since the last Ice Age. Below are some photos of the bog coring – great thanks to Dr. Tom Lowell and his Glacial Geology class from the University of Cincinnati – the folks who did most of the work.

Setting up the coring rig at Browns Lake – early in the day snow covered the ground by 4 pm it was gone (albedo feedback in play).
The core boss (Dr. Tom Lowell) oversees the extraction of another meter of mud from the bog.
Extracting peat – the upper 5 meters or so are peat (significant amount of sphagnum moss and carbon). Note the trees, it is not a sphagnum bog now here.
Setting up the production line and assigning teams and tasks.

 

Coring a tree to determine the recruitment time – the hypothesis is that these trees moved into the bog recently (past 200 years) – the first trees here since the Ice Age. This nutrient limited bog was fertilized by wind blown dust during European Settlement allowing these vascular plants to obtain a foothold in the previously sphagnum moss dominated bog.

 

Hey there is a Wooster student – good job Ben. This white oak is growing on the top of a kame and it has witnessed the changes in the climate and land use for the last 300 years.

 

Nick samples the bog water for its isotopic composition. This is work done in collaboration with isotope geologists at the University of Cincinnati.

Post originally published on the Wooster Geologists blog.