Tree Rings as

Environmental
Indicators
Tree rings, the concentric circles visible in tree-trunk
cross sections, record ecosystem events like re, insect
outbreaks, and logging. We study and date them (in
the process called dendrochronology) to understand
how ecological processes have worked in the past and
how they might work in the future. As more tree-ring
studies are done around the world, we will be better
able to answer questions about sustainability that
aect us all.

rees and tree growth can be useful indicators of processes and events that occur in the natural environment. Th is is particularly true in climates with distinct
seasons, where the annual growth rings of trees, as seen
in tree-trunk cross sections, are easy to distinguish from
each other. (See gure 1 on page 360.) As a tree grows,
it forms a new layer of woody tissue each year. Th is
growth occurs in a thin layer of cells, called the vascular
cambium, located just inside the bark. In temperate
regions, most trees break from winter dormancy and use
nutrients stored during the previous year to produce cells.
In conifer trees, cells created during the spring are less
dense and thin-walled, forming a light-colored zone
called earlywood. Toward the end of the growing season,
smaller and thicker-walled cells are produced in a darkercolored zone called latewood . Together, the earlywood
and latewood zones of wood are considered the annual
growth ring. The science of studying tree rings to learn
something about changes in the environment is called
dendrochronology, and it can be used to analyze patterns of
processes and events in the natural, physical, and cultural
sciences. Since the growth rate of a tree is sensitive to
both natural and human-induced events, conditions during a given year will be either favorable or unfavorable for
tree growth, resulting in a variation in ring widths from

year to year throughout the life of a tree. This pattern of

wide and narrow growth rings can serve as an indicator
to monitor environmental processes in most regions
around the world.

Origins of Dendrochronology
The ancient Greeks, and later Leonardo da Vinci, recognized that trees form new rings of growth each year,
but the modern development of dendrochronology is
credited to Andrew E. Douglass. In the early 1900s,
Douglass, an astronomer at the University of Arizona,
was interested in studying the relationships between
sunspot activity and the Earths climate. Because he
knew that plant growth was aected by changes in climate, he thought that the size of a trees growth rings
would change as cycles of sunspot activity a ected
weather conditions. Before long he showed that there
was a link between tree-ring widths and climate, and he
then developed a technique for matching patterns of
wide and narrow growth rings between trees and
between locations within a geographic region. Th is technique, known as crossdating , is the most fundamental
principle of dendrochronology and is crucial in nearly
every application of the science.

Applications of Dendrochronology
The science of dendrochronology is conducted primarily in temperate and subpolar regions, where most trees
produce a single growth ring each year in response to
seasonal changes in some aspect of the environment.
Since its development, dendrochronology has become a
useful tool that bridges a wide range of environmental
disciplines. These include biogeography (the study of
359

360 THE BERKSHIRE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF SUSTAINABILITY: MEASUREMENTS, INDICATORS, AND RESEARCH METHODS FOR SUSTAINABILITY

Figure 1. Annual Growth Rings

of a Douglas Fir (Pseudotsuga
menziesii) Tree

Source: authors.

As seen in this photo of a douglas rs tree rings, growth rates are

sensitive to both natural and human-induced events, leading to
variability in tree growth. This results in a variation in ring
widths from year to year throughout the life of a tree. This pattern of
wide and narrow growth rings can serve as an indicator to monitor
environmental processes in most regions of the world.

the geographical distribution of animals and plants),

climatology (the study of climate), hydrology (the study
of water), geomorphology (the study of land formations),
and ecology (the study of the relationship between organisms and their environments). Climatology and hydrology, for example, use dendrochronological techniques to
examine past environmental conditions in order to help
evaluate the future sustainability of dierent aspects of
the environment. Scientists start by creating a model
based on data that describes certain environmental variables (such as precipitation, temperature, drought, carbon
dioxide, and other climatic factors) for a particular time
period (the twentieth century, for instance). Information
about tree-ring widths (or other physical and chemical
properties) is added to the model so that the other variables can be reconstructed back in time for the length of
the tree-ring record. Information about trees growing in
a watershed that are sensitive to precipitation, for example, can be compared with information from river gauging stations (locations that scientists use to collect data
about water) and used to model streamow (the ow of
streams, rivers, etc.) back in time long before streamow records were ever kept. These longer-term perspectives of streamow can then be compared to water levels
during the twentieth and twenty-rst centuries and used
to create water management policies that promote greater
sustainability of this ever-dwindling resource.

Tree rings also can be used to look at how ecological

processes have changed over dierent periods of time
and across dierent areas, allowing researchers to analyze how sustainable ecosystems are. Both natural and
human disturbances (like re, tropical cyclones, insect
outbreaks, pathogens, logging, and earthquakes) and
ecological processes that may aect the composition,
structure, and changes in plant life of a forest community are often recorded in the growth rings of trees.
Understanding the e ects of disturbances and how
ecological processes operated in the past can help scientists to predict how forests will change and how sustainable their future ecosystems will be. Th is insight
may be particularly important in an era of climate
change.

Limitations of Dendrochronology
Tree rings are valuable as archives of environmental
events and indicators of sustainability, but there are
limits to what they can tell us. Ice cores (samples of ice
from glaciers), ocean cores (samples from the ocean
oor), speleothems (cave features, such as stalactites,
that form after the cave itself has formed), and lake sediments all can provide longer-term records of past environments than tree rings can. On the other hand, trees
produce more detailed information than these other
indicators. Scientists face a trade-o , therefore, and
must sacrice detail as the period of time being analyzed gets longer.
Recently, dendrochronologists and scientists in other
elds have been assessing whether tree rings can be used as
valid indicators of climatic variability. A key issue to be
resolved rst, however, is that of divergence. Since the midtwentieth century global temperatures have continued to
rise while tree growth has appeared to decline, especially in
higher-latitude locations. This pattern diverges from the
usual one, since higher temperatures historically have
resulted in wider tree rings. Dendrochronologists therefore
must make sure that previous ideas about the climatetree
growth relationship are reliable before attempting to use
growth-ring data as a climate variable.

The Future of Dendrochronology

As researchers discover new ways in which tree rings
canbe used to test sustainability theories, new elds of
dendrochronology are emerging. The tropics are geographic frontiers, where annual growth rings are being
discovered in tree species previously thought to be of
little use to dendrochronological applications. Moreover,
dendrochronologists continue to learn new ways in which

TREE RINGS AS ENVIRONMENTAL INDICATORS

the oxygen, carbon, and hydrogen embedded within tree

rings can provide information on the links between processes taking place in the atmosphere, on land, and in the
sea. New methods of extracting naturally occurring and
human-made chemical compounds xed within tree
rings are constantly being developed as well. These new
technologies are helping researchers look for changes in
the levels of these elements and chemicalschanges that
may be caused by pollution, which can be harmful to the
sustainability of natural resources. Finally, as the number
of tree-ring studies increase around the world, so does
our ability to construct networks of tree-ring data. These
networks of data can be used to answer questions about
the sustainability of natural resources that aect everyone on Earth.
Grant L. HARLEY and Henri D. GRISSINO-MAYER
The University of Tennessee
See also Air Pollution Indicators and Monitoring;
Biological Indicators (several articles); Challenges to
Measuring Sustainability; Ecosystem Health Indicators;
Global Strategy for Plant Conservation; Land-Use and
Land-Cover Change; Long-Term Ecological Research
(LTER); Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and
Forest Degradation (REDD); Remote Sensing

361

FURTHER READING
Cook, Edward R., & Kairiukstis, Leonardas A. (Eds.). (1990).
Methods of dendrochronology: Applications in the environmental sciences. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Fritts, Harold C. (1971). Dendroclimatology and dendroecology.
Quaternary Research, 1, 419449.
Fritts, Harold C. (1976). Tree rings and climate . London: Academic
Press.
Fritts, Harold C., & Swetnam, Thomas W. (1989). Dendroecology: A
tool for evaluating variations in past and present forest environments. Advances in Ecological Research, 19, 111188.
Mann, Michael E.; Bradley, Raymond S.; & Hughes, Malcolm K.
(1999). Northern Hemisphere temperatures during the past millennium: Inferences, uncertainties, and limitations. Geophysical
Research Letters, 26 , 759762.
Rice, Jennifer L.; Woodhouse, Connie A.; & Lukas, Je rey J. (2009).
Science and decision making: Water management and tree-ring
data in the western United States. Journal of the American Water
Resources Association , 45, 12481259.
Schweingruber, Fritz H. (1987). Tree rings: Basics and applications of
dendrochronology. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic
Publishers.
Speer, James H. (2010). Fundamentals of tree-ring research . Tucson:
University of Arizona Press.
Stoffel, Markus; Bollschweiler, Michelle; Butler, David R.; &
Luckman, Brian H. (Eds.). (2010). Tree rings and natural hazards:
A state-of-the-art. Berlin: Springer.
Stokes, Marvin A., & Smiley, Terah L. (1968). An introduction to tree
ring dating. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Swetnam, Thomas W.; Allen, Craig D.; & Betancourt, Julio L. (1999).
Applied historical ecology: Using the past to manage for the future.
Ecological Applications, 9, 11891206.