Sample BP-06 is 355 years old, the innermost ring on the sample dates to the year 1666. It is one of the older trees lost to the ice storm in Bush Park. The sample we analyzed is shown below. It is a radius taken from the original cookie, with the bark at the top and the center of the tree at the bottom.
The ring widths tell the story of the tree’s growth.We imported the scanned image to ring width measuring software to generate the graph below. There are two types of growth trends we look for: long term trends (these look like gentle waves) and the abrupt year-to-year changes (jagged ups and downs). We will be analyzing these growth changes to consider climate change as well as human activity.
Graph showing raw ring widths: BP-06