Henri D. Grissino-Mayer’s research while affiliated with The University of Tennessee Medical Center at Knoxville and other places

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Publications (145)


Author Correction: Tree rings reveal globally coherent signature of cosmogenic radiocarbon events in 774 and 993 CE
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December 2018

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647 Reads

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7 Citations

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The original version of this Article contained an error in the Data Availability section, which incorrectly read ‘All data will be freely available via https://www.ams.ethz.ch/research.html.’ The correct version states ‘http://www.ams.ethz.ch/research/published-data.html’ in place of ‘https://www.ams.ethz.ch/research.html’. This has been corrected in both the PDF and HTML versions of the Article.

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Fig. 1 COSMIC network. Distribution of 44 tree-ring records from which cellulose was extracted for annual 14 C measurements during the intervals 770-780 and 990-1000 CE (circles and rectangles) (Supplementary Fig. 1; Supplementary Tables 1-2). Independent 14 C evidence from two floating treering chronologies 21, 22 (green), and five (quasi) annually resolved ice-core 10 Be records 23, 24 (yellow). White dashed lines refer to atmospheric radiocarbon zones 17. The map reflects knowledge from the authors and was created via software ArcGIS 10.1 SP1 for Desktop by Esri
COSMIC network. Distribution of 44 tree-ring records from which cellulose was extracted for annual ¹⁴C measurements during the intervals 770–780 and 990–1000 CE (circles and rectangles) (Supplementary Fig. 1; Supplementary Tables 1-2). Independent ¹⁴C evidence from two floating tree-ring chronologies21, 22 (green), and five (quasi) annually resolved ice-core ¹⁰Be records23, 24 (yellow). White dashed lines refer to atmospheric radiocarbon zones¹⁷. The map reflects knowledge from the authors and was created via software ArcGIS 10.1 SP1 for Desktop by Esri
COSMIC signature. a Annual ¹⁴C content of 374 tree rings formed between 770 and 780 CE at 27 and seven sites across the NH and SH (light blue and red lines), respectively (Supplementary Fig. 2). b¹⁴C content of 110 tree rings from 990–1000 CE at eight and two sites in the NH and SH (blue and red lines), respectively. Thick lines bracket standard uncertainties around hemispheric means, lower box plots reveal year-to-year ¹⁴C differences (median, 25th and 75th percentiles), and SH data have been shifted relative to the earlier NH data
COSMIC gradient. The ¹⁴C content of individual tree-ring site records averaged over 11-year intervals from 770–780 and 990–1000 CE. Horizontal lines indicate atmospheric radiocarbon zones¹⁷. Grey lines are standard errors of the tree-ring site records. Linear trends within the NH and across both hemispheres are R² = 0.29 and 0.71, respectively (not shown)
Tree rings reveal globally coherent signature of cosmogenic radiocarbon events in 774 and 993 CE

September 2018

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2,138 Reads

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146 Citations

Though tree-ring chronologies are annually resolved, their dating has never been independently validated at the global scale. Moreover, it is unknown if atmospheric radiocarbon enrichment events of cosmogenic origin leave spatiotemporally consistent fingerprints. Here we measure the 14C content in 484 individual tree rings formed in the periods 770-780 and 990-1000 CE. Distinct 14C excursions starting in the boreal summer of 774 and the boreal spring of 993 ensure the precise dating of 44 tree-ring records from five continents. We also identify a meridional decline of 11-year mean atmospheric radiocarbon concentrations across both hemispheres. Corroborated by historical eye-witness accounts of red auroras, our results suggest a global exposure to strong solar proton radiation. To improve understanding of the return frequency and intensity of past cosmic events, which is particularly important for assessing the potential threat of space weather on our society, further annually resolved 14C measurements are needed.


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Advancing Dendrochronological Studies of Fire in the United States

April 2018

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676 Reads

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27 Citations

Fire

Dendroecology is the science that dates tree rings to their exact calendar year of formation to study processes that influence forest ecology (e.g., Speer 2010 [1], Amoroso et al., 2017 [2]). Reconstruction of past fire regimes is a core application of dendroecology, linking fire history to population dynamics and climate effects on tree growth and survivorship. Since the early 20th century when dendrochronologists recognized that tree rings retained fire scars (e.g., Figure 1), and hence a record of past fires, they have conducted studies worldwide to reconstruct [2] the historical range and variability of fire regimes (e.g., frequency, severity, seasonality, spatial extent), [3] the influence of fire regimes on forest structure and ecosystem dynamics, and [4] the top-down (e.g., climate) and bottom-up (e.g., fuels, topography) drivers of fire that operate at a range of temporal and spatial scales. As in other scientific fields, continued application of dendrochronological techniques to study fires has shaped new trajectories for the science. Here we highlight some important current directions in the United States (US) and call on our international colleagues to continue the conversation with perspectives from other countries.



Using Dendrochronology to Investigate the Historical and Educational Value of two Log Structures at Bear Paw State Natural Area, North Carolina, USA

July 2017

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51 Reads

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6 Citations

Tree-Ring Research

During May 2013, the Bear Paw State Natural Area near Boone, North Carolina acquired an 11.5 ha tract of land and two log cabins from David Wray of Blowing Rock, North Carolina. Work was soon underway to determine the historical nature of these two buildings and to evaluate them for consideration for the National Register of Historic Places. A historic structure report, completed as a collaboration between Appalachian State University and the North Carolina Division of Parks and Recreation, was unable to discover much about the history of the two log cabins except that they were both likely moved to their current location in the early 20th Century. To determine when the cabins were built, we extracted core samples from logs in both cabins and compared the tree-ring patterns to region-wide, precisely-dated reference chronologies. We dated the tulip poplar tree-ring chronology from the Big Cabin to the period 1675-1859. Cutting dates on several of the logs revealed tree harvest likely occurred between fall 1859 and spring 1860. Some logs had outermost rings that dated to 1857 and 1858. Still, these logs may have been harvested a few years earlier, or some of the outer rings may have been lost during construction or sampling. We were unable to absolutely date an 81-year long American chestnut chronology from the Small Cabin. Our results confirmed that the Big Cabin was an Antebellum Period structure (pre-American Civil War) and therefore has potential historical significance. Because we still cannot tie this cabin to a historical figure or a historical event, the cabin cannot be nominated yet for inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places, but the identification of an original construction date for the cabin may contribute to further assessment for inclusion on a local or national register. In the meantime, we intend to use this cabin in annual summer workshops for undergraduate students taking courses at Appalachian State University so that more students can be exposed to the hands-on nature of scientific inquiry and can learn the value of dendrochronology for understanding human and environmental history.


Annual growth zones in stems of Hypericum irazuense (Guttiferae) in the Costa Rican páramos

June 2017

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59 Reads

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8 Citations

Physical Geography

The high peaks of the Cordillera de Talamanca in Costa Rica support shrub- and grass-dominated páramo ecosystems that experience stand-replacing wildfires. The dry season that facilitates these fires results in dormancy in plant growth and provides an opportunity to use dendrochronological analyses to determine ages of plants in burn sites to support studies of fire history and postfire vegetation recovery. This study investigates the formation of annual growth zones in stems of the common shrub Hypericum irazuense. Unlike other páramo shrubs, H. irazuense rarely resprouts following fire, instead recovering through seedling recruitment following seed dispersal from the unburned periphery. Laboratory analysis of 19 prepared cross sections from 15 stems shows that samples of H. irazuense from burned areas can provide an estimate of the minimum number of years since the previous fire, supporting earlier work based on field examination of stems. Including a time lag for seedling recruitment or resprouting refines that estimate. Counts of growth zones in most sections coincided with dates of the last known fires. The presence of annual growth zones in H. irazuense places the species within a relatively small group of woody Neotropical species for which annual rings or growth zones have been demonstrated.


Separating Trends in Whitebark Pine Radial Growth Related to Climate and Mountain Pine Beetle Outbreaks in the Northern Rocky Mountains, USA

June 2017

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134 Reads

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11 Citations

Forests

Drought and mountain pine beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae Hopkins) outbreaks have affected millions of hectares of high-elevation conifer forests in the Northern Rocky Mountains during the past century. Little research has examined the distinction between mountain pine beetle outbreaks and climatic influence on radial growth in endangered whitebark pine (Pinus albicaulis Engelm.) ecosystems. We used a new method to explore divergent periods in whitebark pine radial growth after mountain pine beetle outbreaks across six sites in western Montana. We examined a 100-year history of mountain pine beetle outbreaks and climate relationships in whitebark pine radial growth to distinguish whether monthly climate variables or mountain pine outbreaks were the dominant influence on whitebark pine growth during the 20th century. High mortality of whitebark pines was caused by the overlapping effects of previous and current mountain pine beetle outbreaks and white pine blister rust infection. Wet conditions from precipitation and snowpack melt in the previous summer, current spring, and current summer benefit whitebark pine radial growth during the following growing season. Whitebark pine radial growth and climate relationships were strongest in sites less affected by the mountain pine beetle outbreaks or anthropogenic disturbances. Whitebark pine population resiliency should continue to be monitored as more common periods of drought will make whitebark pines more susceptible to mountain pine beetle attack and to white pine blister rust infection.


Dendroclimatology

March 2017

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75 Reads

Dendroclimatology is the use of tree rings that have been absolutely dated to their exact years of formation to better understand the Earth's past, present, and future climate. The field requires basic investigations into the primary climate factors that limit or enhance tree growth at any one specific location or across larger geographic regions using a network of sites. Climate variables that can be analyzed include precipitation, temperature, pressure, various drought indices, and longer-term, multidecadal oscillations. The overarching goal is to reconstruct climate as far back in time as the tree-ring record allows, with a high degree of confidence, and to evaluate past climate trends over past centuries to millennia. The results from these analyses can be used in simulation models to extrapolate future trends expected in climate to better understand the possible human activities that may be contributing to ongoing global warming.


Citations (80)


... In keeping with the collaborative model of citizen science described above, we plan for our research "subjects" to participate in the entire cycle-from research design to data collection, to data analysis and an interpretation of findings, to the formulation and implementation of actions that emerge from analysis, and reflection on the efficacy of actions and research process in collaboration with research participants. This is in line with what CPG scholars have called for: research that is directed explicitly "toward relevance by critically engaging not just with science but also public policy and decision-making," and the direction of which is shaped by a reflexive process of cotheorizing (Urban 2018, 72;Biehler et al. 2018;Biermann and Grissino-Mayer 2018). ...

Reference:

Ecological livelihoods of farmers and pollinators in the Himalayas: Doing critical physical geography using citizen science
Shifting Climate Sensitivities, Shifting Paradigms: Tree-Ring Science in a Dynamic World
  • Citing Chapter
  • April 2018

... Mixed conifer forests of the Southwestern United States represent diverse forest assemblages and ecotypes. These forests can be classified along a spectrum from warm/dry, dominated by ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa); cool/moist, dominated by Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii); to cold/wet, dominated by Engelmann spruce (Picea engelmanii), blue spruce (Picea pungens), and subalpine fir (Abies lasiocarpa) [1]. Historically, mixed conifer forests experienced diverse fire regimes depending on their forest type, with frequent (4 to 30 years) low-intensity surface fires in warm/dry mixed conifer, less frequent (35 to 100+ years) mixed-severity fires in cool/moist mixed conifer and stand-replacing fires occurring relatively infrequently (150 to 300+ years) in cold/wet mixed conifer forests [1,2]. ...

Historical Range of Variability and Current Landscape Condition Analysis: South Central Highlands Section, Southwestern Colorado & Northwestern New Mexico

... to improve the insulating and protective ability of old trees (Zeng et al., 2018). Young trees have wider tree-ring widths than old trees (Shi et al., 2015). This implies that there are physiological differences according to the age of trees, and their age at the time of their fall could play a role in the intensity and rate of the humification and degradation processes. ...

Capturing spiral radial growth of conifers using the superellipse to model tree-ring geometric shape

... The most used research methods in the work were the study and synthesis of materials on climate and its restoration in the historical era [24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36], alternating years with solar eclipses from 3000 BC up to 3000 AD [22,37], as well as logical, graphical analysis, and synthesis of the obtained data. Open access to the materials of the site is of great importance for the appearance of the results [22]. ...

Author Correction: Tree rings reveal globally coherent signature of cosmogenic radiocarbon events in 774 and 993 CE

... Furthermore, tree-ring radiocarbon analysis can provide information about solar activity during the pre-telescope period, such as long solar cycles, and therefore contributes to a better understanding of the physical basis of the sun's activity (Damon and Sonett 1991;Suess 1980;Stuiver and Braziunas 1993;Usoskin et al. 2021). In addition, exceptional increases in tree-ring 14 C abundance, as observed for events in the years 774 AD and 993 AD, may indicate past occurrences of solar super-flares (Büntgen et al. 2018;Miyake et al. 2012Miyake et al. , 2013Usoskin et al. 2013;Uusitalo et al. 2018). ...

Tree rings reveal globally coherent signature of cosmogenic radiocarbon events in 774 and 993 CE

... In contrast, the weight of evidence holds that modern, high-severity wildfires are outside of historical fire regime norms in these forest types 36 . This view is based upon many lines of widely replicated evidence, including large increases in tree density coincident with fire exclusion over the last century documented through comparisons between historical reconstructions and modern measurements of forest structure 12,37 , a paucity of documentary and scientific evidence of high-severity fire occurring in dry conifer forests in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries 38,39 , and abundant evidence of frequent, low-severity fires in the historical tree-ring fire-scar record [40][41][42] . Under this view, management efforts to reduce tree densities and fire severity may be essential to sustaining dry forest systems. ...

Advancing Dendrochronological Studies of Fire in the United States

Fire

... In February 2013, the Environmental Change Laboratory at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UTK), was asked by the CHTA to provide age information for trees adjacent to the Homesteads Tower, to identify trees that post-date the New Deal era and to confirm that the post oak trees in the historic 'triangle' pre-date the Homesteads project. Additionally, the CHTA's request came as several new graduate students were enrolled in an introductory dendrochronology course, and an opportunity arose that could bestow fieldwork experience outside of the "traditional classroom" to dendrochronology students while fulfilling the needs of the CHTA (Rochner et al. 2017). Thus, the primary objectives of this study were to 1) demonstrate a unique application and combination of dendroarchaeology and dendroecology to increase authenticity of a historic landscape on the Cumberland Plateau and therefore bolster its preservation, and 2) emphasize the opportunities for dendrochronologists in community work and science communication by encouraging projects with local nonprofit groups and using these projects to produce fieldwork experience for dendrochronology students and trainees. ...

Using Dendrochronology to Investigate the Historical and Educational Value of two Log Structures at Bear Paw State Natural Area, North Carolina, USA
  • Citing Article
  • July 2017

Tree-Ring Research

... ring formation in ever-wet tropical forests. Previous dendrochronological studies have discovered annual rhythms in growth rings of trees and shrubs distributed around many different tropical ecosystems: from mangroves to the limit of woody vegetation at about 5000 m a.s.l.; from woodland savannas to dry and flooded forests(Brienen et al., 2016;Franco-Ramos et al., 2019;Kerr et al., 2018;Locosselli et al., 2020;Requena-Rojas et al., 2021;Rodriguez-Caton et al., 2021;Schöngart et al., 2017). Here we include new evidences of annual tree-ring in the last unexplored frontier, the ever-wet tropical forests. ...

Annual growth zones in stems of Hypericum irazuense (Guttiferae) in the Costa Rican páramos
  • Citing Article
  • June 2017

Physical Geography

... З внутрішніх чинників найбільший вплив мають порода дерева [14,21,26], спадкова індивідуальна мінливість, вік і плодоношення [1,5,11]. Із зовнішніх факторів на величину приросту впливають широтні, поздовжні і висотні градієнти умов місцезростання дерев [3,12,22], температура повітря і опади [4,9,12,21], ґрунтові умови [17], фітоценотичні взаємини [11,19], різного роду катастрофи (пожежі [2], вітровали і буреломи [7], хвороби, напади шкідливих комах [20,27]), господарська діяльність людини [10,15,18] та інші фактори. ...

Separating Trends in Whitebark Pine Radial Growth Related to Climate and Mountain Pine Beetle Outbreaks in the Northern Rocky Mountains, USA

Forests

... Crossdated records of historical fires that are directly evidenced by cambial fire scars provide critical information for understanding the interactions of fire, climate, terrain, forests, and people through time (Margolis et al., 2022). Studies that combine crossdated records of historical fires and tree establishment are common across the southwestern U.S. (e.g., Roos and Swetnam, 2012), the Appalachian region (Lafon et al., 2017), the mid-Atlantic states (e.g. Stambaugh et al., 2018), and the inland Pacific Northwest where pine (Pinus spp.) that reliably record historical fires are relatively abundant and well-preserved. ...

Fire History of the Appalachian Region: A Review and Synthesis