Laboratory for Dendroclimatology

The Laboratory for Dendroclimatology aims to reconstruct the temporal and spatial variability of the climate of the past utilizing multi-parameter tree ring analysis and to assess and verify the causes of climate change and its impact on woody plants.

The following tasks are covered:

• quantitative analysis of the climate-signal transfer from atmosphere through soil and leaf into the wood of tree rings (Monitoring, calibration and verification of tree ring parameters vs. instrumental data),
• to establish multi-centennial to millennium long time series of tree-ring parameters (ring width, cellstructure parameters, stable isotope ratios) for networks of sites from selected regions of the earth, and
• comparative study of time series of climate proxies from different geo-archives (varved sediments, spelethemes, corals etc.).

The lab is equipped with various technical field equipment, sample preparation tools, a LINTAB tree-ring measurement system and a calibrated optical scanner incl. analsysis software for dendrochronology, instruments to determine the wood chemistry (i.e. cellulose extraction), a confocal laser scanning microscope for the analysis of quantitative wood anatomy and wood density determination as well as two isotope ratio mass spectrometer for stable isotope analyses of tree rings.