Abstract

In this thesis, tree ring records will be used to see the climate response of white spruce trees and extended the current chronology for the Nabesna mine site in Alaska. The current extent of the chronology at this site is from 1593-1992, this study extended that to 2021. Tree ring analysis for this study will focus on blue light intensity (BI), which is a relatively new form of analysis. Another way is latewood density analysis (MXD) which is more expensive but can extrapolate high-frequency data for year-to-year climate data. BI can achieve similar data to the MXD but is cheaper by only using a printer scanner accompanied by BI software Coorecorder. MXD was used in the previous study at this site and BI was not. Correlating tree rings to climate changes becomes easier using the newer software. BI was used on the tree rings from the Nabesna Mine site and has shown that there has been a general warming trend and volcanic eruptions evident in the density of the rings as seen in previous research. This research also added climate correlations for the different indicators latewood bluelight intensity (LWBI), earlywood bluelight intensity (EWBI), delta bluelight intensity (DBI), MXD, and ring width (RW), which found that the maximum temperature and precipitation are the most important factors in the rings for tracking climate.

Advisor

Wiles, Gregory

Department

Earth Sciences

Disciplines

Geology | Other Earth Sciences

Keywords

Climate, Tree Cores, Dendrochronology, Alaska

Publication Date

2023

Degree Granted

Bachelor of Arts

Document Type

Senior Independent Study Thesis

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© Copyright 2023 Maxwell C. Fletcher