Teaching Tree-Ring Science to K-12 Students

Just about everyone from age 2 to 102 can comprehend the image of a tree ring. The words conjure an image of concentric circles of wood that lay the groundwork for a tree's growth and ultimately its age. And with a little explanation, those same people can understand that the size of one ring is proportional to the environment around it for a given year. Therefore, trees are important recorders of Earth's environment, and they can tell us useful information about the past.

These mindful images of tree rings are what brought my attention to bringing tree-ring science into the K-12 classroom: they are recognizable and they can teach people how science works. We have collaborated with the Louisiana State University Coastal Roots Program to add tree-ring science as part of the curriculum to six local middle- and high-schools to test the ability of tree rings to teach kids about science. So far, the program has been incredibly successful! Over 180 students have cored more than 40 trees to be used in dendrochronological analysis. They helped with fieldwork and lab work, and tree cores were brought back to the COASTALab for analysis. Students were then asked to determine what patterns exist in the tree-ring data and why those patterns might have ended up in the tree-ring record. We tested their learning gains before and after our experiments, and students gained as much as 47% more knowledge about climate science, coastal studies, and time-series analysis when participating in our program.

This study has so far shown the value of tree-ring science in K-12 classrooms and the value of citizen-science collected data. The trees in this study have shown strong correlations with hurricane occurrences, drought years, and temperature patterns in Louisiana. Check out the pictures below of students coring trees, analysis of one tree stand, and the discovery of a thousand-year-old cypress tree that was discovered on one of our field trips!

Principle Investigators: Jill Trepanier, Clay Tucker, Mark Shafer, James Jordan, Pam Blanchard, Andy Nyman, Ed Bush

Funding from: Louisiana Sea Grant (LSG)