A long-term perspective of the recent climate change on the Tibetan Plateau is hampered by a lack of sufficiently long weather records. Here we describe a tree-ring based reconstruction of annual (prior July to current June) precipitation for the western Qilian Mts., northern Tibetan Plateau. This reconstruction accounts for 54.9% of the variance in instrumental precipitation data from 1935 to 2003. It shows distinct dry periods in 1782–1798, 1816–1837, 1869–1888 and 1920–1932, matching in general with local historical archives and other climatic proxy data on the northern Tibetan Plateau. Our research provides a background for evaluating hydroclimatic changes in the past two hundred years in a vulnerable arid region on the northern Tibetan Plateau.

Climate and longleaf pine (Pinus palustris P. Mill.) radial growth relationships have been documented within its southern and western distribution. However, knowledge of this relationship is lacking along its northern latitudinal range margin (NLRM). Based on the principles of ecological amplitude, limiting factors, and studies of coniferous species in eastern temperate forests of the U.S., we hypothesized that the radial growth of longleaf pine in mixed pine-hardwood forests is responding to winter temperatures in southeastern Virginia. Two longleaf pine chronologies were developed to determine the relationship between radial growth and monthly temperature, precipitation, and Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) via response function analysis (RFA). Results at the 0.05 level yielded significant response function coefficients with a positive response to current winter temperature and precipitation and a negative response to prior August PDSI. In studies of climate and longleaf pine radial growth in other parts of its range, winter temperature and precipitation have not shared a significant positive association with radial growth. Instead current spring and summer precipitation usually share this positive association. These findings add more evidence to an emerging pattern suggesting that winter temperatures contribute to limiting the radial growth of temperate conifers at northern range margins in the Northern Hemisphere.

Dendroarchaeological samples can contain three kinds of information: chronological, behavioral, and environmental. The decisions of past people regarding species selection, beam size, procurement and modification techniques, deadwood use, and stockpiling are the most critical factors influencing an archaeological date distribution. Using dendrochronological samples from prehistoric and historic period sites in the same area of eastern Utah, this paper examines past human behavior as the critical factor in dendroarchaeological date distributions.

The traditional approach to standardizing tree-ring time series is to divide raw ring widths by a fitted curve. Although the derived ratios are conceptually elegant and have a more homogenous variance through time than simple differences, residual heteroscedasticity associated with variance dependence on local mean ring width may remain. Incorrect inferences about climate forcing may result if this heteroscedasticity is not corrected for, or at least recognized (with appropriate caveats). A new variance stabilization method is proposed that specifically targets this source of heteroscedasticity. It is based on stabilizing the magnitude of differences from standardization curves to a common reference local mean ring width and uses data pooled from multiple radii. Application of the method to a multi-site kauri (Agathis australis (D. Don) Lindley) data set shows that (a) the heteroscedasticity issue addressed may be generic rather than radius-specific, at least for some species, (b) variance stabilization using pooled data works well for standardization curves of variable flexibility, (c) in the case of kauri, simple ratios do not appear to be significantly affected by this cause of heteroscedasticity, and (d) centennial-scale variance trends are highly sensitive to the analytical methods used to build tree-ring chronologies.

We describe methods and progress in developing the American Long Oak Chronology (ALOC), an effort to construct an oak tree-ring chronology from the Central US that spans the Holocene. Since 2000, we have collected and measured ring widths on over 550 pieces of subfossil oak (Quercus) wood. Over 330 oak samples have been radiocarbon dated, with ages ranging up to 14,000 cal yr B.P. A 1,093-year-long tree-ring record has been constructed from live and subfossil bur oaks (Q. macrocarpa Michx.) and swamp white oaks (Q. bicolor Willd.) growing along and buried in sediments of streams that flow through northern Missouri and southern Iowa, USA. Here we describe the ALOC for the period A.D. 912–2004 to demonstrate its dendrochronological value, display the material quality, and emphasize the importance of chronology construction. We also report on progress in developing older floating chronologies. The development of more long, multi-millennium chronologies will be an important contribution to dendroclimatology. These chronologies will be particularly useful to the Central US, a region with a continental climate and limited temporal depth of annually resolved paleo-records. Perhaps more critical is its location in the middle of one of the most important agricultural regions in the world.

Sassafras is a deciduous, hardwood, ring-porous species occurring throughout the eastern United States as far west as the Great Plains, but sassafras is used rarely in dendrochronological studies. Samples from 44 sassafras (Sassafras albidum) trees were crossdated (Crossdating Index 2) within and between two sites in Indiana. Ring-width indices were significantly correlated with a variety of climatic indicators. These results suggest that sassafras can be used for a variety of dendrochronological studies.

The International Tree-Ring Data Bank (ITRDB) is an invaluable resource, providing access to a massive and growing cache of tree-ring data. Oxygen, carbon, nitrogen and hydrogen isotope tree-ring studies, which have provided valuable climatic and ecological information, have proliferated for decades so an ITRDB expansion to include isotopic data would likewise benefit the scientific community. An international tree-ring isotope databank (ITRIDB) would: (1) allow development of transfer functions from extended isotopic data sets, (2) provide abundant tree-ring isotopic data for meta-analysis, and (3) encourage isotopic network studies. A Europe network already exists, but the international data bank proposed here would constitute a de facto global network. Associated information to be incorporated into the database includes not only the customary ITRDB entries, but also elements peculiar to isotope chronologies. As with the current ITRDB, submission of data would be voluntary and as such it will be crucial to have the support of the tree-ring isotope community to contribute existing and forthcoming isotope series. The plan is to institute this isotope database in 2010, administered by the National Climatic Data Center.