About Us

The Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research (LTRR) is a hub of inter-disciplinary research, teaching, and outreach excellence at the University of Arizona (UArizona). The LTRR is an academic research unit based in the College of Science. Worldwide the LTRR is a preeminent center of dendrochronology – using the information stored in the annual rings of trees to understand and quantify interactions among our Earth’s climate, ecosystems, and societies. The LTRR excels in developing and advancing novel approaches to solve scientific questions of societal relevance, and to communicate these questions, their answers and consequences to researchers, student populations (K-6,7-12, undergrad, grad), the general public, resource managers, and policymakers alike.

The LTRR is the custodian of tree-ring collections that have meaning and significance beyond our community of scientists and disciplinary scholars. We recognize that the mission of the LTRR has benefited greatly from material collected from Indigenous lands, including current tribal lands and ancestral homelands, and from (often unacknowledged and uncredited) partnerships with Indigenous people and Tribal Nations. We are currently working to make the Indigenous data in our collections visible and accessible through outreach, education, open-ended collaboration, and data sharing. Our long-term goal is to develop partnerships with Indigenous peoples, groups, and organizations that have a claim to, or interest in, the tree-ring collections archived at the LTRR to better care for and steward both past and future collections.