Skookum Butte Ponderosa Pine Tree Ring Chronology from Oregon

Tree ring width measurements from Ponderosa Pine (PIPO) at Skookum Butte, Oregon, provide a climate proxy record. The chronology spans 356 years, from 311 to -45 calendar years before present. The dataset was archived by NOAA NCEI's World Data Service for Paleoclimatology and last updated in 1995.

Use Cases

• Calibrate tree-ring width measurements against known climate variables to reconstruct past temperature or precipitation for the region.
• Analyze the chronology for marker years (e.g., narrow rings) to identify historical drought events or volcanic eruptions affecting Oregon.
• Use the standardized ring-width index series as a validation dataset for regional climate model simulations of the past millennium.
• Compare the Ponderosa Pine (PIPO) growth patterns from this site with other ITRDB chronologies to study spatial climate teleconnections.

Strengths

• Chronology spans 356 years, providing a multi-century climate record.
• Data is part of the International Tree-Ring Data Bank (ITRDB), a standardized global archive.
• Includes precise geographic location (Oregon, USA) and species identification (PIPO).

Limitations

• Temporal coverage ends at -45 BP (approximately 1995 CE), with no updates since the 1995 archive date.
• The single-site, single-species focus limits broad spatial inferences without combining other datasets.
• Raw measurement data and sample depth information are not detailed in the provided metadata.

Provenance

Source

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

Collection Method

Tree ring cores collected and measured using standard dendrochronological techniques.

Time Range

311 to -45 calendar years before present (BP).

Freshness

null

Geography

Skookum Butte, Oregon, United States of America.