A Professional Development Workshop in Dendrochronology: North American Dendroecological Fieldweek (NADEF)

Indiana State University, Terre Haute IN

Investigators

Abstract

The North American Dendroecological Fieldweek (NADEF) is a work-week that teaches the tools of dendrochronology, provides networking opportunities for students and professionals, and expands the benefits of dendrochronological records to new locations. Dendrochronology is the use of tree-rings to reconstruct environmental variables. Trees record everything that effects their growth and, therefore, become useful records of environmental history. Such things as past temperature, precipitation, fire, and insect outbreaks are recorded by the trees for their entire lifetime and can be tapped for this information. Each year, the fieldweeks provide professional development to forty students and researchers interested in learning the tools of dendrochronology. Tree-ring research is only taught as a formal class in a handful of universities in the United States so most students do not have access to this training. During the fieldweek, the participants conduct five unique research projects under the guidance of an experienced dendrochronologist. These five research projects usually include a climate reconstruction, fire history, insect outbreak reconstruction, and stand-age structure analysis. The participants work up the projects from field collection, through laboratory analysis, and the week culminates in the presentation of these research projects to the other fieldweek members and to managers from the local community. With the importance of environmental change issues in today's society, the need for high resolution proxy records of climate and ecological variables is quickly growing and the tools of dendrochronology provide many of these records. This workshop will enable students to learn about the tools of dendrochronology and faculty and professionals to pick up this set of tools that are useful for ecosystem management. Understanding how forests function and what role disturbance plays in the natural balance of these forests if an important goal of today's scientists and forest managers. These fieldweeks provide the tools to study these questions and specifically provide these answers at the field stations where the fieldweek is held. The local managers will gain the results of five tree-ring based research projects on their managed lands.