Note: This work is under development but has been released temporarily for classroom testing purposes.

Lab 1 - Launching an Expedition

Introduction

Dendrochronologists often travel to remote regions across the world in search of old, slow growing, trees that capture the environmental conditions where they live in their annual growth rings. By studying these trees, scientists learn about environments and climates, hundreds-to-thousands of years in the past. For example, scientists have used trees from such sites to reconstruct temperature variability of the past two thousand years in the Northern Hemisphere, to place exact calendar dates on ancestral pueblos in the U.S. Southwest and to reconstruct streamflow estimates for the U.S. Colorado River.

What will I learn?

In this virtual lab, you will be introduced to the science of dendrochronology and learn how tree-ring science is conducted. You will see how tree-core samples are obtained and processed, and take a virtual tour of a tree-ring laboratory. You will hear two accomplished dendrochronologists describe their career paths and you will explore the workplace of dendrochronologists by examining the nature of four tree-ring research sites around the world. Then you will consider what kinds of research sites scientists seek to help them answer questions about how our climate has changed in the past.

To complete the lab, you will explore publicly available tree-ring datasets from The International Tree-Ring Databank (ITRDB) and you will focus on the work of one science investigator to help you understand how a scientist works, and how the scientific community works together to push knowledge forward.

Key Questions

Key Questions addressed by this unit include:

  • What is dendrochronology?
  • What types of research sites are the most useful for tree-ring research?
  • How can tree rings be used to describe changes in past climatic conditions?
  • How can online resources be used to to learn more about dendrochronological data and research?


References and Additional Resources

For more information about the science in this lab, consult the following websites, articles and books.