Lavaca River Tree Ring Chronology from 282 to 32 BC

Tree ring width data from the Lavaca River region in Texas provides a climate proxy record spanning 250 years. The chronology covers the period from 282 to 32 years before present, measured from living and subfossil trees. NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information archives this paleoclimatology study, originally published in 1982.

Use Cases

• Reconstruct past drought severity by analyzing the annual tree_ring_width measurements as a proxy for precipitation.
• Calibrate the chronology against other regional proxies using the calendar_years_bp time index.
• Study the frequency of extreme climate events by identifying statistically narrow or wide rings within the series.

Strengths

• 250-year continuous annual resolution chronology.
• Data is archived by NOAA's World Data Service for Paleoclimatology, a authoritative repository.

Limitations

• Temporal coverage is relatively short for paleoclimate studies at 250 years.
• Data is geographically limited to a single site (Lavaca River, Texas).
• The dataset is temporally stale, with a last update date of 1982, potentially lacking modern reanalysis.

Provenance

Source

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

Collection Method

Tree ring analysis (dendrochronology) of samples from the Lavaca River region.

Time Range

282 to -32 calendar years before present (BP).

Freshness

null

Geography

Lavaca River, Texas, United States of America.