The primary goal of this research is to reconstruct climate from the growth rings of oak trees buried and preserved in floodplain sediments in Northern Missouri and Southern Iowa. Previous research by the researchers has yielded a collection of 230 samples of well-dated oak wood that spans across the last 14,000 years to produce millennium length tree-ring chronologies.
Broad goals of the research include the development of annual-resolution millennia-length climate records in tree rings from buried logs to help build a better understanding of climate variability over interior North America. The research has the potential to contribute to many scientific fields including, ecology, climatology, and geology as well as a better understanding of the carbon cycle.
