Dendrochronology is a powerful tool for the reconstruction of paleotemperatures in high latitudes... more Dendrochronology is a powerful tool for the reconstruction of paleotemperatures in high latitudes and paleo-precipitation in the tropics. The measurement of ring widths and the analysis of carbon and oxygen isotopes within -cellulose have often been used to capture past climate variability. However, most workers have focused their studies in higher latitudes. Here we present preliminary data obtained from tree cores extracted from the alpine tropical tree species Polylepis tarapacana. This widely distributed Andean tree species exhibits robust annual growth rings. We analyzed ä18O values obtained from -cellulose and derived a ring width index from a tree growing on the slopes of Volcan Sajama. This location is significant as this forest is the highest in the world and because Sajama also has a permanent ice cap that has been previously analyzed for ä18O at annual resolution for about one century and at much lower resolution for about 25,000 years (Thompson et al., 1998). It has prev...
bstract The calibration of radiocarbon dates by means of a master calibration curve has been inva... more bstract The calibration of radiocarbon dates by means of a master calibration curve has been invaluable to Earth, environmental and archeological sciences, but the fundamental reason for calibration is that atmospheric radiocarbon content varies because of changes in upper atmosphere production and global carbon cycling. Improved instrumentation has contributed to high-resolution (interannual) radiocarbon activity measurements, which have revealed sudden and anomalous activity shifts previously not observed at the common resolution of 5–10 years of most of the calibration scale. One such spike has been recently reported from tree rings from Japan and then again in Europe at A.D. 774–775, for which we report here our efforts to both replicate its existence and determine its spatial extent using tree rings from larch at high latitude (northern Siberia) and bristlecone pine from lower latitude (the White Mountains of California). Our results confirm an abrupt ~ 15‰ 14C activity increas...
Progressive tree-ring xylem cell size changes may reveal the influence of changing environment du... more Progressive tree-ring xylem cell size changes may reveal the influence of changing environment during the growing season. This study examines xylem tracheid cell growth in red pine (Pinus resinosa Ait.) seedlings grown in cabinets under controlled ...
1. Lantzy, R. J., Mackenzie, F. T.Geochim. Cosmochim. Acta 43, 511 (1979) 2. Adams, F. C., Van Cr... more 1. Lantzy, R. J., Mackenzie, F. T.Geochim. Cosmochim. Acta 43, 511 (1979) 2. Adams, F. C., Van Craen, M. J., Van Espen, P. J.: Environ. Sci. Technol. 14, 1002 (1980) 3. Duce, R. A., Hoffman, G. L., Zoller, W. H. : Science 187, 59 (1975) 4. Dams, R., De Jonge, J.: Atmos. Environ. 10, 1079 (1976) 5. Vogg, H., H~rtel, R,: J. Radioanal. Chem. 37, 856 (1977) 6. Dannecker, W., Steiger, M., Naumann, K. : Fresenius Z. Anal. Chem. 325, 50 (1986) 7. Krivan, V., Franek, M., Baumann, H., Pavel, J.: ibid. 338, 583 (1990) 8. Brimblecombe, P.: Air: Composition and Chemistry. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press 1986 9. Finlayson-Pitts, B. J., Pitts, N. P. Jr.: Atmospheric Chemistry. New York: Wiley 1986 10. Ross, H. B.: Water, Air, Soil Pollut. 50, 63 (1990) 11. Fischer, F. G., Brandner, J.: Z. Physiol. Chem. 320, 92 (1960) 12. Bowen, H. J. M.: Environmental Chemistry of the Elements. London: Academic Press 1979 13. Heinrichs, H., Herrmann, A. G. : Praktikum der Analytischen Geochemie. Heidelberg: Springer 1990 14. Krivan, V., Egger, K. P.: Fresenius Z. Anal. Chem. 325, 41 (1986) 15. Taylor, S. R., McLennan, S. M.: The Continental Crust: It's Composition and Evolution. Oxford: Blackwell 1985 16. Heinrichs, H., Waehtendorf, B., Wedepohl, K. H., ROssner, B., Schwedt, G.: N. Jb. Min. Abh. 156, 23 (1986) Fergusson, J. E.: The Heavy Elements: Chemistry, Environmental Impact and Health Effects. Oxford: Pergamon 1990 Winchester, J. W., in: Atmospheric Pollution, p. 75 (Pickett, E. E., ed.). Berlin: Springer 1987 Schultz, R.: Ber. d. Forschungsz. Wald6kosysteme/Waldsterben der Univ. G6ttingen, Reihe B, Bd. 7 (1988) D6rr, H., Mt~nnich, K. O., Mangini, A., Schmitz, W. : Naturwissenschaften 77, 428 (1990) 17.
The Baja California Peninsula is one of the most arid regions in Mexico, receiving an average of ... more The Baja California Peninsula is one of the most arid regions in Mexico, receiving an average of only 168 mm of precipitation annually. Climate change scenarios project drier and warmer conditions in the region at the end of this century driven by anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases. The growing demand for limited water supplies and the impacts of climate change pose a challenge to manage the already scarce water resources in the Peninsula. Analysis of historical hydroclimatic variability in the Peninsula is limited because most of the early instrumental climate data collection started only in the 1950s. In this study, we reconstruct past precipitation variability for the Peninsula using two tree ring chronologies from northern (Pinus monophylla) and southern (Pinus lagunae) Baja California. Our two reconstructions document multicentury hydroclimatic variability in the Peninsula, including events that turned out to be more extreme than those captured by modern instrumental records. Drought episodes are longer, more frequent, and more intense in the northern peninsula compared to the southern region. Multiyear dry and wet events in our two reconstructions exhibit broad spatial extent, affecting most of northwest Mexico and the western United States, which are mainly caused by broad‐scale atmospheric circulation patterns such as El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO). The results of this study allow framing current and projected droughts in a longer‐term context, thus providing a better understanding of past climate variability and a basis for robust water resource management in the region.
Measurements of apical extension (height increment), needle production and ring width from a deta... more Measurements of apical extension (height increment), needle production and ring width from a detailed sequence of measurements on one Pinus ponderosa tree from the Santa Catalina Mountains, southern Arizona, USA for the period 1962 - 1998 are presented. From these measurements the relationships between tree age and height, and tree height and diameter at breast height are determined. These are compared with the overall site trends for the same relationships determined from height and basal age of individual trees, and the site ring width chronology to test whether the growth of the individual tree is comparable with that of other trees at the study site. Needle production and apical extension are highly correlated (r = 0.67) and show generally similar climate correlations. Ring widths are not significantly correlated with either of these series but all three series are significantly positively correlated with precipitation and dew point temperature during the relatively dry months o...
Minze Stuiver, Professor Emeritus of the Quaternary Research Center at the University of Washingt... more Minze Stuiver, Professor Emeritus of the Quaternary Research Center at the University of Washington where he founded the Quaternary Isotope Laboratory (QIL), passed away on December 26, 2020. Minze was born at the beginning of the Depression on October 25, 1929, in Vlagtwedde, the Netherlands, where he grew up in a rudimentary home with his five family members, a single cold water faucet and stove in the kitchen, a stove in the living room for heating, and a weekly bath with a bucket of water warmed up by the living room stove. His life and high school education (1942– 1945)were greatly disrupted byGerman occupation during WWII, including nearly being conscripted into German forced labor near the end of the War. Minze started his undergraduate life at the University of Groningen in 1947, studying physics, mathematics, and astronomy. After graduation in 1950, he embarked on graduate studies at the University of Groningen, receiving his M.S. degree in experimental nuclear physics and mathematics in 1953 and a Ph.D. in biophysics in 1958. There Minze worked under the direction of Hessel de Vries, who had been actively involved in developing radiocarbon methodologies and hardware, and who observed systematic discrepancies between radiocarbon and calendar dates (now known as the “de Vries effect”), forming the basis for calibration in radiocarbon dating. Minze worked with de Vries in 1958–1959 tomodel variations in atmospheric radiocarbon content, from which he identified a linkage of radiocarbon production to sunspot activity. Minze and his wife Anneke moved to the Yale University Geochronometric Laboratory in 1960, where he helped develop the Yale Radiocarbon Laboratory, of which he subsequently became Director. Additionally, he became closely involved with the journal Radiocarbon, which originated at Yale as the Radiocarbon Supplement to the American Journal of Science. Minze became one of several early editors of Radiocarbon, but by 1977 he was the Editor-in-Chief and instituted a policy whereby the journal would no longer almost exclusively publish date lists from radiocarbon laboratories around the world, but would encourage submission of articles describing research to which radiocarbon measurements were applied. While
This item is part of the Tree-Ring Research (formerly Tree-Ring Bulletin) archive. For more infor... more This item is part of the Tree-Ring Research (formerly Tree-Ring Bulletin) archive. For more information about this peer-reviewed scholarly journal, please email the Editor of Tree-Ring Research at editor@treeringsociety.org
Dendrochronology is a powerful tool for the reconstruction of paleotemperatures in high latitudes... more Dendrochronology is a powerful tool for the reconstruction of paleotemperatures in high latitudes and paleo-precipitation in the tropics. The measurement of ring widths and the analysis of carbon and oxygen isotopes within -cellulose have often been used to capture past climate variability. However, most workers have focused their studies in higher latitudes. Here we present preliminary data obtained from tree cores extracted from the alpine tropical tree species Polylepis tarapacana. This widely distributed Andean tree species exhibits robust annual growth rings. We analyzed ä18O values obtained from -cellulose and derived a ring width index from a tree growing on the slopes of Volcan Sajama. This location is significant as this forest is the highest in the world and because Sajama also has a permanent ice cap that has been previously analyzed for ä18O at annual resolution for about one century and at much lower resolution for about 25,000 years (Thompson et al., 1998). It has prev...
bstract The calibration of radiocarbon dates by means of a master calibration curve has been inva... more bstract The calibration of radiocarbon dates by means of a master calibration curve has been invaluable to Earth, environmental and archeological sciences, but the fundamental reason for calibration is that atmospheric radiocarbon content varies because of changes in upper atmosphere production and global carbon cycling. Improved instrumentation has contributed to high-resolution (interannual) radiocarbon activity measurements, which have revealed sudden and anomalous activity shifts previously not observed at the common resolution of 5–10 years of most of the calibration scale. One such spike has been recently reported from tree rings from Japan and then again in Europe at A.D. 774–775, for which we report here our efforts to both replicate its existence and determine its spatial extent using tree rings from larch at high latitude (northern Siberia) and bristlecone pine from lower latitude (the White Mountains of California). Our results confirm an abrupt ~ 15‰ 14C activity increas...
Progressive tree-ring xylem cell size changes may reveal the influence of changing environment du... more Progressive tree-ring xylem cell size changes may reveal the influence of changing environment during the growing season. This study examines xylem tracheid cell growth in red pine (Pinus resinosa Ait.) seedlings grown in cabinets under controlled ...
1. Lantzy, R. J., Mackenzie, F. T.Geochim. Cosmochim. Acta 43, 511 (1979) 2. Adams, F. C., Van Cr... more 1. Lantzy, R. J., Mackenzie, F. T.Geochim. Cosmochim. Acta 43, 511 (1979) 2. Adams, F. C., Van Craen, M. J., Van Espen, P. J.: Environ. Sci. Technol. 14, 1002 (1980) 3. Duce, R. A., Hoffman, G. L., Zoller, W. H. : Science 187, 59 (1975) 4. Dams, R., De Jonge, J.: Atmos. Environ. 10, 1079 (1976) 5. Vogg, H., H~rtel, R,: J. Radioanal. Chem. 37, 856 (1977) 6. Dannecker, W., Steiger, M., Naumann, K. : Fresenius Z. Anal. Chem. 325, 50 (1986) 7. Krivan, V., Franek, M., Baumann, H., Pavel, J.: ibid. 338, 583 (1990) 8. Brimblecombe, P.: Air: Composition and Chemistry. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press 1986 9. Finlayson-Pitts, B. J., Pitts, N. P. Jr.: Atmospheric Chemistry. New York: Wiley 1986 10. Ross, H. B.: Water, Air, Soil Pollut. 50, 63 (1990) 11. Fischer, F. G., Brandner, J.: Z. Physiol. Chem. 320, 92 (1960) 12. Bowen, H. J. M.: Environmental Chemistry of the Elements. London: Academic Press 1979 13. Heinrichs, H., Herrmann, A. G. : Praktikum der Analytischen Geochemie. Heidelberg: Springer 1990 14. Krivan, V., Egger, K. P.: Fresenius Z. Anal. Chem. 325, 41 (1986) 15. Taylor, S. R., McLennan, S. M.: The Continental Crust: It's Composition and Evolution. Oxford: Blackwell 1985 16. Heinrichs, H., Waehtendorf, B., Wedepohl, K. H., ROssner, B., Schwedt, G.: N. Jb. Min. Abh. 156, 23 (1986) Fergusson, J. E.: The Heavy Elements: Chemistry, Environmental Impact and Health Effects. Oxford: Pergamon 1990 Winchester, J. W., in: Atmospheric Pollution, p. 75 (Pickett, E. E., ed.). Berlin: Springer 1987 Schultz, R.: Ber. d. Forschungsz. Wald6kosysteme/Waldsterben der Univ. G6ttingen, Reihe B, Bd. 7 (1988) D6rr, H., Mt~nnich, K. O., Mangini, A., Schmitz, W. : Naturwissenschaften 77, 428 (1990) 17.
The Baja California Peninsula is one of the most arid regions in Mexico, receiving an average of ... more The Baja California Peninsula is one of the most arid regions in Mexico, receiving an average of only 168 mm of precipitation annually. Climate change scenarios project drier and warmer conditions in the region at the end of this century driven by anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases. The growing demand for limited water supplies and the impacts of climate change pose a challenge to manage the already scarce water resources in the Peninsula. Analysis of historical hydroclimatic variability in the Peninsula is limited because most of the early instrumental climate data collection started only in the 1950s. In this study, we reconstruct past precipitation variability for the Peninsula using two tree ring chronologies from northern (Pinus monophylla) and southern (Pinus lagunae) Baja California. Our two reconstructions document multicentury hydroclimatic variability in the Peninsula, including events that turned out to be more extreme than those captured by modern instrumental records. Drought episodes are longer, more frequent, and more intense in the northern peninsula compared to the southern region. Multiyear dry and wet events in our two reconstructions exhibit broad spatial extent, affecting most of northwest Mexico and the western United States, which are mainly caused by broad‐scale atmospheric circulation patterns such as El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO). The results of this study allow framing current and projected droughts in a longer‐term context, thus providing a better understanding of past climate variability and a basis for robust water resource management in the region.
Measurements of apical extension (height increment), needle production and ring width from a deta... more Measurements of apical extension (height increment), needle production and ring width from a detailed sequence of measurements on one Pinus ponderosa tree from the Santa Catalina Mountains, southern Arizona, USA for the period 1962 - 1998 are presented. From these measurements the relationships between tree age and height, and tree height and diameter at breast height are determined. These are compared with the overall site trends for the same relationships determined from height and basal age of individual trees, and the site ring width chronology to test whether the growth of the individual tree is comparable with that of other trees at the study site. Needle production and apical extension are highly correlated (r = 0.67) and show generally similar climate correlations. Ring widths are not significantly correlated with either of these series but all three series are significantly positively correlated with precipitation and dew point temperature during the relatively dry months o...
Minze Stuiver, Professor Emeritus of the Quaternary Research Center at the University of Washingt... more Minze Stuiver, Professor Emeritus of the Quaternary Research Center at the University of Washington where he founded the Quaternary Isotope Laboratory (QIL), passed away on December 26, 2020. Minze was born at the beginning of the Depression on October 25, 1929, in Vlagtwedde, the Netherlands, where he grew up in a rudimentary home with his five family members, a single cold water faucet and stove in the kitchen, a stove in the living room for heating, and a weekly bath with a bucket of water warmed up by the living room stove. His life and high school education (1942– 1945)were greatly disrupted byGerman occupation during WWII, including nearly being conscripted into German forced labor near the end of the War. Minze started his undergraduate life at the University of Groningen in 1947, studying physics, mathematics, and astronomy. After graduation in 1950, he embarked on graduate studies at the University of Groningen, receiving his M.S. degree in experimental nuclear physics and mathematics in 1953 and a Ph.D. in biophysics in 1958. There Minze worked under the direction of Hessel de Vries, who had been actively involved in developing radiocarbon methodologies and hardware, and who observed systematic discrepancies between radiocarbon and calendar dates (now known as the “de Vries effect”), forming the basis for calibration in radiocarbon dating. Minze worked with de Vries in 1958–1959 tomodel variations in atmospheric radiocarbon content, from which he identified a linkage of radiocarbon production to sunspot activity. Minze and his wife Anneke moved to the Yale University Geochronometric Laboratory in 1960, where he helped develop the Yale Radiocarbon Laboratory, of which he subsequently became Director. Additionally, he became closely involved with the journal Radiocarbon, which originated at Yale as the Radiocarbon Supplement to the American Journal of Science. Minze became one of several early editors of Radiocarbon, but by 1977 he was the Editor-in-Chief and instituted a policy whereby the journal would no longer almost exclusively publish date lists from radiocarbon laboratories around the world, but would encourage submission of articles describing research to which radiocarbon measurements were applied. While
This item is part of the Tree-Ring Research (formerly Tree-Ring Bulletin) archive. For more infor... more This item is part of the Tree-Ring Research (formerly Tree-Ring Bulletin) archive. For more information about this peer-reviewed scholarly journal, please email the Editor of Tree-Ring Research at editor@treeringsociety.org
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