Dr. Mark Abbott and his graduate students Cole and Adeel visited the Wooster Tree Ring Lab with portions of white oak beams from a historic cabin in Pittsburgh. The mission was to tree ring date the outer ring of the samples to determine which calendar year the timber was cut for the structure. Here the Pitt team in the sample prep. lab with the two samples where they polished them for analysis.
Nick Wiesenberg oversaw the dating, which started with a tour in the west wing of the Wooster Tree Ring Lab.
Adeel measured one of the samples – understandably he is amazed with the anatomy of the white oak rings.
Cole measured the other sample measuring ring widths from the screen using CooRecorder. The Pitt group are exports in lake core analysis and both Adeel and Cole are analyzing lake varves, they are also thinking about using this measuring setup for varve analyses (see below).
Nick takes the controls and analyzes the measurement data against our tree-ring database and reveals the date of cutting for the cabin.
The crossdating with our master series shows that the outer ring of the samples were both 1834, at least for the two samples both were cut in the same year after the 1834 growing season so the cabin was likely built shortly after this. The 1698/99 rings are strong markers.
The varves that the Pitt team are analyzing are shown above – they may be annual like tree-rings and their research will extract paleoenvironmental data from these. This core was taken by the group a few weeks before their visit to Wooster in Northern Minnesota where it was tens of degrees below zero. See below.
The coring operation in Minnesota – ~12 inches of ice and 60 feet of water and then a few tens of meters of mud is the sequence through this ice hole.
Yay, Wooster Tree Ring Lab! Looking very good. Another dating mission accomplished with precision.