Tree ring width measurements from the Longfellow Trail site in Pennsylvania provide a climate proxy record spanning 302 years. The data, archived by NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information, was published in 1981 as part of the International Tree-Ring Data Bank. This record helps reconstruct past environmental conditions in the northeastern United States.
Use Cases
- Calibrating climate models by comparing reconstructed temperature or precipitation from tree_ring_width with other proxy records.
- Analyzing growth anomaly patterns in the chronology to identify past drought or cold events.
- Establishing a dated master chronology for the region to cross-date other archaeological or paleoecological samples.
Strengths
- Covers a 302-year time period from 271 to 31 BCE.
- Part of the authoritative ITRDB (International Tree-Ring Data Bank) collection curated by NOAA NCEI.
Limitations
- Single-site data from Pennsylvania limits broad regional climate inferences.
- Record ends over 2000 years ago, with no overlap with the instrumental era for direct calibration.
- Unknown sample depth (number of trees) affects statistical confidence in the chronology.
Provenance
- Source
- NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) World Data Service for Paleoclimatology.
- Collection Method
- Tree ring cores collected and measured to create a standardized width chronology.
- Time Range
- 271 to 31 BCE (calendar years before present).
- Freshness
- null
- Geography
- Longfellow Trail site, Pennsylvania, United States.