October 3,  2012

ANNOUNCEMENTS

IF YOU MISSED CLASS TODAY

In class today we did the following:

 TREE RING WEEK continued!  While Dr H is out of the country presenting at an academic conference, our expert Graduate Tree-Ring Lab Teaching Assistants continued to cover tree rings and facilitating 2 graded group activities. 

Dr H will be out of town this week and may not be able to respond to an emails (or grade report requests) while gone.  Please contact one of the TA's instead with your course questions.  Laura Marshall can do a grade check for you in my absence.

Today students started learning about the marvelous Bristlecone Pine trees and  how to use tree-ring data from these trees to make test hypotheses and evaluate what tree rings can tell us about environmental change.

1.  We started by watching the video : Living History: The Ancient Bristlecone Pine
- (you can view it again in D2L under Videos> Films & Videos Shown in Class

2.  Then there was a short slide overview of the 5 western U.S. Bristlecone Pine sites was given.

  This webpage summarizes the key points about the 5 sites:  http://fp.arizona.edu/kkh/nats101gc/5-site_photos.htm

3. The class then got into Groups for the G-3 Bristlecone Pine Tree-Ring Class Activity  (see Class Notes pp 118-121)  

 OPTIONAL:   To learn more about these fascinating trees, see below:

INTERESTING BCP TOPICS & LINKS Some BCP-related topics & links to investigate:
THE BCP COLLECTION Learn about the UA Tree-Ring Lab's unparalleled BCP collection in this article:  Lost and Found: The Bristlecone Pine Collection [pdf] learn about the  dedicated BCP field volunteers & how a really old frost ring at the Methuselah Walk site was found!	SIGNIFICANT BCP TREES Find out what's significant about these specially named BCP trees and look for more info about them in the links below:  Methuselah Tree,Patriarch Tree, and Prometheus Tree Find out about "The Martyred One" and other unique BCP trees
REFLECTIONS ON PRESERVATION OF BCP Reflections Around a Mutilated Tree [pdf] for the unabashed Tree-Hugger!	POETRY ABOUT A BCP TREE Read British poet Roger McGough's  poem "The Oldest Tree on Earth . . ." Any poets or  creative writers in the class?
THE HUNT TO CLOSE "THE GAP" Bristlecone work raises chances of bridging gap[pdf]More on "the gap":  Laboratory of Tree-Ring research fills weather record gaps  How far back in time can we go with BCP?	ABOUT ROCKY MTS BCP The Oldest Known Rocky Mountain Bristlecone Pines (Pinus aristata Engelmm.)  Dendrochronology of Bristlecone Pine (Pinus aristata Engelm.) in Colorado  Learn more about the ecology of  these neat trees!
FROST RING ,VOLCANOES & ARCHAEOLOGY Is there a link between BCP's and the ancient  Minoan civilization of the Aegean Sea?   [pdf] Read the original frost ring paper:  "Frost rings in trees as records of major volcanic eruptions" [pdf] Where the frost ring & volcano connection  first came from & Dr H's role in it.	THE ORIGINAL "MR BRISTLECONE" Find out who Edmund Schulman was, then read Schulman's classic 1954 paper on "Longevity under Adversity in Conifers" The scientist who first "discovered" the importance of these amazing trees

MORE INTERESTING BCP LINKS - Explore!

West & East --Two kinds of BCP:  Pinus longaeva & Pinus aristata
Learn more about them at these links:

Pinus aristata
http://www.conifers.org/pi/pin/aristata.htm 
http://www.fs.fed.us/database/feis/plants/tree/pinari/all.html

Pinus longaeva
http://www.conifers.org/pi/pin/longaeva.htm

The Ancient Bristlecone Pine website: http://www.sonic.net/bristlecone/intro.html  

NOVA Online:  The Methuselah Tree  
Explore the Methuselah Grove  http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/methuselah/explore.html

"Wisdom of the Ancients" (a narrative about bristlecone pine trees written for the general public (children and adults) by Dr. Hal Fritts, emeritus professor of the UA's Laboratory of Tree Ring Research)  pdf file

OpenRoad.TV: Bristlecone Pine Ancient Forest (with a video) 
http://www.openroad.tv/index.php?categoryid=16&p25_id=44

Digital Desert: Bristlecone Pine Forest:  http://digital-desert.com/bristlecone-pine-forest/  (lots of photos)

A General Tree-Ring Site -- LOTS of info about tree rings of all kinds here!
Ultimate Tree-Ring Webpages http://web.utk.edu/~grissino/

 

ANNOUNCEMENTS

The MIDTERM EXAM is on Wednesday Oct 10th.

A MIDTERM STUDY GUIDE is now posted in D2L - it is updated for 2012.

Dr H will be out of town this week and may not be able to respond to an emails (or grade report requests) while gone.  Please contact one of the TA's instead with your course questions.  Laura Marshall can do a grade check for you in my absence.

IF YOU MISSED CLASS TODAY:  

• Watch the Living History video about the Bristlecone Pines -- it's posted in D2L under videos> Films & Videos Shown in class.

• 

• Read through Class Notes pp 118-121 so you'll know what you need to make up

• IMPORTANT! To make up the  G-3 Bristlecone Pine Activity, you MUST attend one of the TA's office hours
                     in order to complete the activities with the wood specimens and tree ring data. 
                  
                     The TA's office hours (and a map to the lab where office hours are held) can be found here:  http://fp.arizona.edu/kkh/nats101gc/teachingteam.htm
                    PLEASE EMAIL the TA in advance to let her know you are attending her office hour to make up the activity so she can have the materials ready

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