Dendrochronology of bristlecone pine, Pinus longaeva

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Abstract

Since 1953 the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research has conducted dendrochronological studies of bristlecone pine (Pinus longaeva D.K. Bailey, sp. nov.) in the White Mountains of California. This research resulted in the establishment of a continuous tree-ring sequence of 8253 yr. The millennia-old pines have emerged as a unique source of chronological data and the precisely dated wood is essential to certain paleoenvironmental and geophysical investigations. Over 1000 dendrochronologically dated decade samples of bristlecone pine supplied to three C-14 laboratories have been used to calibrate the radiocarbon time scale for the past seven millennia, a development of far reaching consequences in the fields of archaeology and geology. In addition, recent advances in other methods of analyzing past climatic variability — techniques involving stable isotope ratios, amino acid racemization, remanent magnetism, and trace element abundances — have greatly increased the demand for wood of known age and, hence, for chronology development. Spanning the past 7500 yr, 1138 prepared decade samples, with a total weight of nearly 16 kg are available for study.

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      In 7 instances, we undertook duplicate measurements of the same decadal wood sample. The tree ring-dated ages of these samples had been determined in the 1960s by the late C. Wesley Ferguson of the Laboratory of Tree Ring Research (LTRR), University of Arizona [5,6]. All of these samples had been collected at an elevation above 3000 meters in the White Mountains of east central California (USA).

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      In dry, hot environments trees will narrow their stomatal openings to save water, so ci is commonly limited by moisture availability and vapor pressure deficit, giving strong correlations with rainfall and drought severity indices (Treydte et al., 2001; Wils et al., 2010). Bristlecone pines from the White Mountains of California (Pinus longaeva, D.K Bailey) provide remarkable tree-ring records, extending back thousands of years, largely explored through ring width measurements (LaMarche, 1974; Ferguson, 1979; Salzer et al., 2009). In addition there have been several studies that have used stable isotopes to explore the bristlecone pine record of the White Mountains, (Long et al., 1987; Leavitt and Long, 1992; Feng and Epstein, 1994; Leavitt, 1994; Tang et al., 1999).

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