TUCSON, AZ -- Buried under the west end bleachers of the University of Arizona stadium is the first and still greatest of all the tree ring labs in the country.
Researchers there analyze cross-sections of various trees from around the country, looking closely at the rings they bear.
It's a branch of science known as Dendrochronology and its goal is to put the present in proper historical context to better understand the present and improve understanding of possible future environmental issues.
Professor Tom Swetnam, director of the lab, says the original breakthrough of using tree rings happened right here in the southwest, dating our ancient ruins.
Since then, tree rings have been a source of information about climate, archeology and the history of civilizations that have been affected by climate.
Tree rings were also pivotal in checking the accuracy and helping to improve Carbon-14 dating, the method used by scientists and archeologists to determine how old organic things are.
In Tucson, research on tree rings is being done daily by Professor Swetnam and his colleagues to analyze our past climate shifts and better understand those still to come.
"Basically what we've been able to do is show that the rings are very well correlated with the amount of rainfall that occurred that year...so the trees, their growth is controlled by how much precipitation they've been able to receive," Swetnam said.
Narrow rings point to drought years and wide rings signal wet years reflecting greater tree growth.
Researchers can also track the history of forest fires using burn scars found on the tree rings.
"What we see is these ponderosa pines were repeatedly recording fires that burned around them," said Swetnam.
So much has already been discovered through the study of tree rings and Professor Swetnam is confident there are many more discoveries still to come.
