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Tree Stories: How Tree Rings Reveal Extreme Weather Cycles
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- čas přidán 29. 04. 2014
- New BYU study documents extreme 16-year drought in Utah
BYU Geography Professor Matt Bekker uses dendrochronology (dendro=tree, chronology=time) to reveal extreme weather patterns in the Western U.S. By taking core samples from trees and measuring tree rings, the BYU research team can correlate patterns in tree rings to weather cycles. The process allows researchers to extend the known climatic history of a region hundreds of years beyond the written history. Such information can be used by water managers to prepare for possible drought cycles in the future. Data collected in Utah revealed an extreme period of drought that spanned 16 years; the event, which occurred in the year 1703, was previously unknown to climatologists. See more at:
news.byu.edu/archive14-apr-den...
Video produced by BYU News
Producer Julie Walker
Photography Brian Wilcox
Editor Michael Gordon
NEWS RELEASE FROM MAY 1, 2014:
TREE RINGS REVEAL NIGHTMARE DROUGHTS IN THE WEST
If you think the 1930s drought that caused The Dust Bowl was rough, new research looking at tree rings in the Rocky Mountains has news for you: Things can get much worse in the West.
In fact the worst drought of this century barely makes the top 10 of a study that extended Utah's climate record back to the year 1429.
With sandpaper and microscopes, Brigham Young University professor Matthew Bekker analyzed rings from drought-sensitive tree species. He found several types of scenarios that could make life uncomfortable in what is now the nation's third-fastest-growing state:
- Long droughts: The year 1703 kicked off 16 years in a row with below average stream flow.
- Intense droughts: The Weber River flowed at just 13 percent of normal in 1580 and dropped below 20 percent in three other periods.
- Consecutive worst-case scenarios: The most severe drought in the record began in 1492, and four of the five worst droughts all happened during Christopher Columbus' lifetime.
"We're conservatively estimating the severity of these droughts that hit before the modern record, and we still see some that are kind of scary if they were to happen again," said Bekker, a geography professor at BYU. "We would really have to change the way we do things here."
Modern climate and stream flow records only go back about 100 years in this part of the country, so scientists like Bekker turn to Mother Nature's own record-keeping to see the bigger picture. For this study, the BYU geographer took sample cores from Douglas fir and pinyon pine trees. The thickness of annual growth rings for these species is especially sensitive to water supply.
Using samples from both living and dead trees in the Weber River basin, the researchers built a tree-ring chronology that extends back 585 years into Utah's natural history. Modern stream flow measurements helped them calibrate the correlation between ring thickness and drought severity.
As Bekker and his co-authors report in the Journal of the American Water Resources Association, the west's climate usually fluctuates far more than it did in the 1900s. The five previous centuries each saw more years of extremely dry and extremely wet climate conditions.
"We're trying to work with water managers to show the different flavors of droughts this region has had," said Bekker. "These are scenarios you need to build into your models to know how to plan for the future."
Bekker collaborated with researchers from the U.S. Forest Service, Columbia University and Utah State University. The team is currently working on a climate reconstruction based on tree rings that date back more than 1,000 years. Read more here: news.byu.edu/archive14-apr-den...
Thank you. Doing a project on this and the professor barely explained it. This clears it all up
such a good video! thank you!
Good work being done here
You are explained very nice
During highway expansion we saw hundred of trees cut down with each having more than 100 rings on it. You can imagine in which direction our progress is going on...
This is really amazing, science can do magic.
I see why the movie 'The Fountain' used this as a reference for the tattoos on his arm
That is so freakin cool.
I know this video was made several years ago. Hopefully Mr. Bekker or another knowledgeable professor will come back and respond to my question. To clarify, I have been a professional management forester about 45 years, with a BS degree in forest management. I have worked my entire career in Virginia with occasional assignments to the midwest. So my experience with boring trees is extensively thousands of eastern and southern hardwoods and pines, and of course my initial college work and constant sivilculture courses throughout my career. When it is said that tree rings are narrower in years of drought, what are you actually describing? Is it the combination of spring wood and summer wood that make up one year's growth that, together, are narrower than other years, or is it the thickness of the spring wood ring and the summer wood rings by themselves (that make up one year's growth)? My interpretation is that, at least in the south and east USA with more consistent rainfall than western States (average rainfall in VA is about 34" - 40" annually and pretty constant) the width of growth rings is more a factor of growing space for the tree and it's health, and not drought or excessive rainfall. I've bored many many trees that are 100+ years of age with periods of narrowing growth rings followed by increasingly wider rings during a portion of their lives that correspond to when either the landowner told me or through my own knowledge that the area had been selectively harvested. Or trees I bore with a large open space next to them where a neighboring tree died many years before (still standing) that gave the tree I'm boring more growing space with less competition for soil moisture and increased sunlight, so it grew faster after the neighboring tree died. In this case, wouldn't the difference in growth ring width of several years before and after the logging or adjacent tree death at that point be a result of the increasingly restricted growing space before the tract was selectively harvested and increased growing space the tree had after neighboring tree were cut, and not less or more rainfall? I've bored declining yard trees whose narrowing growth rings started when the house was built, a driveway was constructed next to the tree, etc., that caused extensive root damage which of course slowed the tree's growth. Another example; at about the 1:47 mark in your above video, you can clearly see in the constantly narrowing outer growth rings that perhaps the last forty or fifty years of this tree's growth was greatly declining almost every year. Surely this does not indicate a severe 40-50 year long drought at the end of this tree's life. Wouldn't this instead be indicative of the declining health of the tree? Or, if it was growing in a forest, indicative of the competition of neighboring trees that restricted its growth more every year? Thus, wouldn't health or close spacing be a more accurate explanation of differences in growth ring width rather than annual rainfall, at least in the eastern USA? How can the difference in formation of growth rings from each reason be determined?
Thank you for making this video....these are my same thoughts and provide us good information on climate change or a lack there of....
Great video on an important field of climate research.
What about tree species in which the rings are not easily seen. Can one stain them to make them more "contrasty"?
I'm in this video!
tippu boys
If there is multiple years with a drought, are they able to distinguish the difference?
Then there will be too many thinner rings
how do the rings of the trees get distorted due to advancing glaciers?
Advancing glaciers wouldn't really "distort" a tree ring record. Advancing (growing) glaciers remove water from the everyday water cycle, these drought-like conditions may register as a comparatively thin ring in a tree-ring record. Furthermore, during periods of mass glaciation, air temperature in generally cooler; cooler air has less ability to carry water vapor, and so during these "cool" periods, there is generally less precipitation. This may also register in a tree-ring record as a thinner ring. However, most (if not any) tree-ring records do not go back long enough in time to record past major glaciations (such as in the late Pleistocene) anyways.
Oh my gosh, it took hours to find out of how does archaeologists uses a tree to determine its date
:43-:49 Droughts and Narrow Rings
So interesting. Trees tell us our fate!
tqqqqq from nepal
This is Awesome. Praise God!
Nah son, praise trees.
Thention diverentional lybrary😍
I saw today whay and have surge this like information chanels to share 😍
I was looking today to the 3 strong grean trees 😍 olmost everyting is olrady of every were from the sight of this trees.
As i saf the leafs arened able to releases less negative space in to the inviormend the magnetude of space and motion is bilding up less negative space😍
Vor the leaves to get red liked collars.
End the patickles of oxels of the leaves inside to deintangle and drop off😍 this part i olrady onderstood
Than.....the same happence within the branses and the stam dimention in the most moving layer😍
It becomes so less negative for the particles in that dimentional layer to loses thention in there enertia feilds and bocomes more lowinteracting till the infiorment around the tree dimention enable the tree the releases again.
Than the space of that dimentional layer filled with this lower interacting particle speeds olso up again and intangles again 😍 and zo on and zo an and zo on
Whay trea's has jear rings 😍🛸 jahoe 🌈
En the behaviure of water is subjected towart the same space infiorment we oll are made of😍
The voice should be in bollywood dubbed movie
Dendrochronology is pseudo-science.
Tree-rings are also determined by microclimates, pests, rainfall, disease, and canopy cover - they are useless at determining temperature and climate.
In addition, a single tree can have dramatically different ring-thicknesses in one section of trunk. The left side may have thick rings in a certain decade, while the right side has thin rings. So if you core the tree from the left the climate was warm, and if you core it from the right the climate was cold.
Same goes for dendrochronology. If tree-rings are highly variable in one tree, and stands of trees are effected by local conditions, then how can you compare a ship’s timber with a reference bog-oak in Ireland, or a bristlecone in America?
As I say - it is all bogus pseudo-science. It’s a joke.
See my recent paleoclimate paper: Modulation of Ice Ages by Dust and Albedo.
Ralph.
Hummmm weather patterns have always been. Screw the carbon tax and global warming. LOL
That's a very illogical statement to make for several reasons. A: You're assuming natural variations in climate (not weather) aren't studied, when it is at the forefront of understanding human climate change. B: All studies of past climate change cycles show that in our current geological time scale we should be experiencing great cooling due to where we are in milankovitch cycles (earths orbit), which obviously is not the case. C: There is a proven connection between greenhouse gases and global insulation; greenhouse gases are the most vital component in climatic systems.