Working Fields - Basics

Dendrochronology is concerned with the systematic study of tree rings. Possible variables are e.g. ring width, latewood density, and vessel size. These variables can be measured and recorded as time series. Although the growth pattern of a tree is influenced by a variety of endogenous and exogenous factors, the climatic variability leaves the most distinct signal in a tree-ring series. It allows dendrochronologists to compare individual series with each other and, finally, to place them, precisely to the year, on the time axis (fig. 1).


overlapping technique

Fig. 1: The principle of chronology building by overlapping subsequent tree-ring series
(a: data sources; b: individual wood samples, which overlap regarding their growth period; c: tree-ring series of the individual samples; d: chronology).


The main applications of dendrochronology are:
One of our tasks consists in mediating the understanding of the methods of dendrochronology to the users of our results (from sampling over measuring to evaluation). A further emphasis of the work is the assembly and extension of chronologies.


A more detailled description of basics and methods of dendrochronology is given on the page working fields - dendrochronology.

literature about dendrochronology

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