As we aim to learn more about the environment and global warming, one innovative approach is the study of trees. As it turns out, trees are giant organic recording devices. Indeed their rings contain information about past climate, civilizations, ecosystems and even galactic events, much of it many thousands of years old.
Labs around the world are studying this historical data and learning more about historical patterns of climate variations.
See “Chronicles of the Rings: What Trees Tell Us” in the New York Times.
The Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research at the University of Arizona was founded in the 1930s by A.E. Douglass, an astronomer who turned to trees to better understand the connection between sunspots and climate.