Why Trees Are Living Climate Records I NOVA I PBS
wZgjX99g-KY • 2020-02-06
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Kind: captions Language: en when a tree grows it encodes information into its wood kind of like a living book each year a tree grows thicker by adding a layer of new wood so if you slice through the trunk and look at these layers which appear as rings you're looking at a record of how that tree grew year after year let's take a closer look at how the Rings form under a microscope you can actually see the individual cells during the growing season the new cells are large and thin walled we call this early wood and it forms the lighter part of the ring then as the days become shorter the tree starts to prepare for winter by producing cells that are smaller and thicker walled we call this late wood and it forms the darker part of the ring in winter the tree stops growing all together and stays dormant until spring but that's not all the tree rings can actually tell us something about the environment that the tree was growing in when conditions are favorable the tree rings are fatter and when resources like water and the sun's energy are scarce they're thinner what that means is that really old trees can actually tell us something about what the climate was like even before humans had records you
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