Tree Ring Chronology from Bras d'Or Lake for Paleoclimate Reconstruction

NOAA/WDS Paleoclimatology archives a tree-ring chronology dataset from the Bras d'Or Lake area in Canada's Northwest Territories. The data covers a time period from 191 to -38 calendar years before present, used for environmental reconstruction. This study is maintained by NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information and was last updated in 1988.

Use Cases

• Calibrating climate models using tree-ring width as a proxy for past temperature or precipitation over a 229-year period.
• Analyzing growth anomaly years within the chronology to identify extreme historical climate events.
• Reconstructing local environmental conditions for the Northwest Territories region from the provided time-series data.
• Cross-dating this chronology with other ITRDB (International Tree-Ring Data Bank) series to validate regional climate signals.

Strengths

• Data spans a 229-year time period (191 to -38 BP), providing a multi-century environmental record.
• Archived by NOAA NCEI's World Data Service for Paleoclimatology, an authoritative source for peer-reviewed paleodata.

Limitations

• Temporal coverage ends at -38 BP (38 years before 1950), limiting analysis of the most recent centuries.
• The dataset's last documented update was in 1988, indicating potential staleness in metadata or curation methods.
• Geographic scope is limited to a single site (Bras d'Or Lake), reducing generalizability for broader regional studies.

Provenance

Source

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

Collection Method

Tree ring data collection and analysis, likely following standard dendrochronological methods for the ITRDB.

Time Range

191 to -38 calendar years before present (BP).

Freshness

Last updated in 1988.

Geography

Bras d'Or Lake area, Northwest Territories, Canada.