Last week, AMRE students, Kendra Devereux and Alexis Lanier, ventured out to Barnes Preserve in Wooster and The Wilderness Center located in Wilmot, Ohio.
The team collected cores from white and red oak trees at both locations to update their chronologies and analyze land use history of these areas.
Barnes Preserve is a 76-acre park known for its rejuvenating atmosphere, diverse wildlife, and accessible trails. The team focused on collecting samples from mature trees in order to create a new local chronology. The Tree Ring Lab hopes to return to Barnes Preserve and build upon this record in the future.
AMRE students Kendra Devereux (left) and Alexis Lanier (right) coring an oak at Barnes Preserve.Nick Wiesenberg coring a nearby tree.A honeysuckle bush along the trail.The team coring a fallen oak deep in the brush at Barnes Preserve.
The Wilderness Center has an old growth forest named Sigrist Woods that the team was interested in sampling. From these cores they hoped to learn more about a recent storm that damaged and felled many trees in the area. They plan to look more closely at the cores to see if ring widths were affected by this event by either storm damage or loss of competition.
Preliminary results are showing that the trees from Sigrist are dating back to the late 1800’s. Stay tuned for more of their results!
Special thanks for Denny Jordan and Herb Broda for helping facilitate this research.
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.
Last Wednesday, the AMRE group met with Ray Leisly at Sonnenberg Village in Kidron, Ohio.
Mr. Leisly brought the group to three different historical structures, including two homes and one barn. The families who own these structures are interested in learning how old their historical buildings are.
AMRE group and Nick Wiesenberg meet with Ray outside of Sonnenberg Church.An example of one of the original deeds from Miller House.
The group collected around 15 cores from each structure, using both hand borers and an electric drill with a hollow drill bit. This process is more thoroughly outlined in our Gingery Barn post.
Dr. Wiles using the electric drill to extract a core from a beam in Miller Barn.Nick extracting core from overhead beam with a hand borer in Miller Barn.Stacked beams from Zuercher house.Freshly mounted core taken from Zuercher house beam.
On Thursday, the group returned to the lab to finish preparing the samples. Nick Wiesenberg used the belt sanders while Kendra and Juwan hand-sanded each core. This process helps to expose the ring boundaries so they can be more easily counted and measured under the microscope.
The team is currently analyzing each core by counting the number of rings, measuring ring widths, and comparing this data to a master chronology. Cross-dating will allow us to obtain the date that each tree was cut down, which will then indicate how old each historical structure is. Soon we will be able to report to our clients with details on our findings and a calendar date for when their buildings were constructed.
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.
I recently had the pleasure to work with a team of ecologists for eight days in Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve. The point of the trip was to reoccupy and expand investigations of the Cooper Plots established over 100 years ago in the wake of the retreating ice in the West Arm. A nice rundown of this ecological succession work is presented here on Glacier Hub. The ecology team recently published on their rediscovery of the plots, which was heroic considering the immense lands, intense brush and sometimes cryptic description of the plot locations.
The accommodations and views in the West Arm of Glacier Bay were spectacular. Logistics of the project were supported by the National Park Service, who we gratefully acknowledge.
The team of ecologists included (left to right) Drs. Allison Bidlack (Director, Alaska Coastal Rainforest Center, University of Alaska Southeast), Sarah Bisbing (University of Nevada – Reno) and Brian Buma (University of Alaska Southeast). I was along to core trees at the sites (Wooster Tree Ring Lab) and to measure the size of alders.
Sarah and Brian cordon off one of Cooper’s 1-meter plots with string so we don’t trample the vegetation. Sarah reals out a 15-meter tape with Allison on……
Learning about environmental change from tree rings
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