Summer 2018 research in the Tree Ring Lab has come to a close. The group of five students worked on a variety of projects, learning about the climate and history of Ohio and Alaska, and the application of different dendrochronological techniques and statistical analyses. They also gained experience effectively conveying their research to others and writing official reports of their findings.
The summer research team on their last day working together (Left to right: Greg Wiles, Nick Wiesenberg, Victoria Race ’19, Juwan Shabazz ’19, Kendra Devereux ’21, Josh Charlton ’19, and Alexis Lanier ’20).
AMRE students with a sampled oak tree at Brown’s Lake Bog in Wooster, Ohio (Alexis Lanier ’20, Juwan Shabazz ’19, and Kendra Devereux ’21).
The AMRE team accomplished a lot during the eight weeks they were here on campus. Their research started with the principles of dendrochronology, when they learned how to count individual tree rings and measure their widths under the microscopes. From here, the team learned how to run this data in different programs like COFECHA and ARSTAN. This process allowed them to date many historical structures across Northeast Ohio such as Gingery Barn and Miller House and Barn. You can find a full list on the TRL’s reports page.
AMRE students with
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AMRE at Barnes Preserve and The Wilderness Center
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.
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.
Summer 2018 Research in the CoW Tree Ring Lab
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.
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.
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.
A New Publication on the Russian Fareast
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 International Tree Ring Databank.
Photo below shows some of the coauthors at the base of Tobalchik Volcano on the Kamchatka Peninsula.
The Cooper Plots – Ecological Succession in Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve, Alaska
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……