Preparation and Analysis of Tree-Ring Specimens From Washington State, USA

Abstract

The purpose of this project has been to produce tree-ring chronologies from increment cores of Pinus ponderosa collected from an area in Washington State south of the Trail, British Columbia copper smelter. The cores were collected by Carl Fox, now of Southern California Edison, Rosemead, California, in 1977 and delivered to the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research in 1980. We began work on the project in July, 1981 when funding became available from the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory. According to Carl Fox, the cores were collected from seven sites, three control sites and four pollution sites. We successfully dated cores from all the control sites, but from only two of the pollution sites. We have produced five site chronologies from the dated cores. However, we suggest that because of the nature of the chronologies, the individual core and tree chronologies comprising the site chronologies may provide more meaningful information than the site chronologies for subsequent analyses of the data.