Tree-Ring Talk

The Many Meanings of Climate: Insights from My Multidisciplinary Journey

A typical list of definitions for the phenomenon known as “climate” tends to range from simple phrases (“average weather”), to quotable sayings (“climate is what you expect, weather is what you get”), to generalized descriptions of a wide range of features associated with the term (“the statistical description in terms of the mean and variability of relevant quantities over a period ranging from months to thousands or millions of years”).

Montane subtropical forests of South America: advances in (hydro)climatic studies

During the last few years, significant progress has been made in the development of ring-width chronologies in the subtropical forests of South America. Seasonally dry forests are characterized by a marked regionality in precipitation and the presence of numerous woody species that are poorly studied from the point of view of dendrochronology. However, dendrochronological records have made it possible to identify the responses of vegetation to climate in different places, and to develop climatic and hydrological reconstructions.

Inside tree rings — studying tree growth and forest dynamics from the bottom up

Tree-ring Talk by Candidate for Ltrr Faculty Position

Tree-rings as a toolbox for studying drought dynamics

Tree-ring Talk by Candidate for Ltrr Faculty Position

Interpreting tree ring records using a plant ecophysiological approach

Trees rings record a wealth of information on climate, disturbance, and forest dynamics, and can record these processes from the plot to regional to global scales. However, extracting plant physiological processes from the tree ring record has proved to be more difficult, as integration of leaf to whole tree processes can often lead to confounding results. My research aims to bring a plant ecophysiological perspective to interpreting the tree ring record and to ask, what processes are the rings actually recording?

Using tree rings to anticipate and manage the effects of climate change on forests

Tree-ring Talk by Candidate for Ltrr Faculty Position

Tree-ring data can help resolve the scientific uncertainty surrounding the future behavior of forests and their contribution to the earth's carbon cycle. I describe work in my lab

Forests, fisheries, and five centuries of North Pacific ecosystem variability

Along North America's West Coast, winter sea level pressure is a top-down driver of coastal upwelling, precipitation, and river discharge. Remarkable coherence among these geophysical parameters induces covariance of biological productivity across marine and terrestrial ecosystems, as evidenced by growth-increment chronologies of fish, clams, and trees. Robust paleoenvironmental records indicate that these biologically-relevant winter climate patterns are dominated by low-frequency, 40-60 year periodicities at higher latitudes.

Alexander (Zan) Stine Talk

Wednesday Lecture - Irina Panyushkina

Living on the water: wood and prehistoric pile-dwellings

The image of stilt houses built along lake shores, thus avoiding the floods, is one of the most striking from central European archeology. It comes from the preservation of most of the bearing structures in wood, creating the so-called “field of posts”, due to the wet and anoxic environment where they were buried for millennia.

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