New York State and NE North American Dendrochronology Project
The Cornell Tree-Ring Laboratory is working to date historic buildings, and to build tree ring chronologies backwards in time by species and site/area, in the New York State and Northeast North American region. This project began with work by Dr. Carol Griggs on historic buildings in the New York State and wider Northeast North American region and especially work she carried out as part of her PhD thesis on excavated wood at mastodon sites in New York. This project is now formally part of the Cornell Tree Ring Laboratory. We have been delighted with progress so far. This project is also now part of Sturt's dendro course at Cornell for undergraduates, and the students will thus be able to learn practical dendrochronology in the field.
We are interested in all wood from the present back to the late Pleistocene. This ranges from historic houses and buildings and structures in New York and Northeast North America to old to very old wood from excavations, ponds, lakes, road cuttings, etc. We have so far worked with oak, hemlock, pine, spruce, elm, larch, ash, maple and beech (and we are happy to try other species). We can arrange to carry out the sampling where appropriate. For historic buildings we can use small cores taken from timbers, and these can be filled and "hidden" if requested. Please see our submitting samples page for more information.
Sampling a 14,000 year old log in Portland, Maine.
Coring 19th century timbers, McGraw Hall, Cornell.