| Description of the project |
Characteristics and main objectives of the research project:
- World’s oldest living tree North American Bristlecone pine is a remarkable species, constituting tree-ring growth series which span around eight millennia.
- The extraordinary longevity of the species provides us with the opportunity to analyze past climatic fluctuations at exceptionally long scale with yearly and even sub-annual resolution.
- Microanatomical analysis of tree rings of this species will provide results of so far unprecedented length.
- Bristlecone pine chronologies have a well-established connection with past climatic changes and frost rings phenomenon with climate fluctuations associated with climatically effective volcanic eruptions. A secondary proxy for such forcing and other climatically derived patterns is lignification.
- In this project, the unique bristlecone pine tree-ring archive at the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research will be explored to develop long records of blue-ring (unlignified tree rings structures) data and these explored at a cellular level to develop new lines of proxy evidence.
The project is conducted in cooperation with the Laboratory of Tree Ring Research, University of Arizona, Tucson, USA.
Supervisors: dr hab. Marcin Koprowski, dr Charlotte Pearson |