West Virginia Tree Ring Chronology from 275 to 76 Years Before Present

Tree ring width measurements from a single site in West Virginia, USA, provide a 200-year chronology for paleoclimate reconstruction. The data covers the period from 275 to 76 calendar years before present. This archived study is maintained by NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information under its World Data Service for Paleoclimatology.

Use Cases

• Calibrating climate models by comparing tree ring width variations with known historical climate proxies.
• Analyzing growth anomaly patterns within the 200-year chronology to infer past drought or temperature events.
• Establishing a regional dendrochronological reference by cross-dating this site chronology with others from the ITRDB network.

Strengths

• Data covers a continuous 200-year period (275 to 76 BP).
• Sourced from the authoritative International Tree-Ring Data Bank (ITRDB) via NOAA's World Data Service.

Limitations

• Data is from a single site (Zigafuss House), limiting spatial representativeness.
• The temporal coverage is relatively short (200 years) for long-term climate trend analysis.
• The last documented update to the record was in 1874, indicating potential metadata staleness.

Provenance

Source

NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) World Data Service for Paleoclimatology.

Collection Method

Tree ring core samples analyzed via dendrochronology.

Time Range

275 to 76 calendar years before present.

Freshness

null

Geography

West Virginia, United States of America.