Shaggy-barked cross-sections of trees are stacked from floor to ceiling, each giant tree "cookie" labeled and wrapped in raggedy gray duct tape.
But this messy room holds important work. Here, scientists work to both quantify the ages of trees and chart their disturbances, a field of study called dendrochronology. They do this by extracting cores from live trees, residual stumps or timber from human structures. Fire scars provide cross-checks with databanks from other trees in other forests, providing a timeline that can extend back for centuries.
On a recent visit, Dr. Mike Stambaugh, the director of the Center for Tree-Ring Science, told me about a project he’s working on — this one to determine when a local Missouri farmhouse and grist mill was built by European settlers. By coring wood samples cut from ends of the timbers, his team learned that the logs for the mill were cut in 1847. Scars in that wood also presented a rare opportunity to date the frequency of fires before European settlement.
Mike’s work also helps future trees. By working with wood chemistry experts, he’s able to explore the potential for new kinds of forest products generated after fires move through the forests in the southeast and the west. His team is identifying novel compounds that arise from the resin that pine trees create in response to wildfire exposure.
So counting tree rings is not just about knowing how old a single tree is — it’s a way to understand trees that provides insights to our past and to our future.
