Pascagoula River
Met up with fellow dendro folks Grant Harley from Southern Miss and Clay Tucker from LSU (and others) to core bald cypress on the lower Pascagoula River to study streamflow. We also found a lot of nice overcup oak.
Author: mtherrell
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Choctawhatchee River
Went down to Bruce, Florida with Civil Eng. colleague G. Tootle as well as a great group of Environmental Science and CE students to core bald cypress trees to support a reconstruction of Choctawhatchee River streamflow. We were updating an earlier collection by D. Stahle as well as collecting some fantastic subfossil samples some of which may be thousands of years old. We have a nascent web site devoted to the project here http://choctawhatcheerivertreeringstudy.weebly.com/
Wabash River
Made a quick trip up to eastern Illinois in December to sample bottomland oak at Sielbeck Forest and Beall Woods, both of which have some very nice old growth oak. Sielbeck is just north of Metropolis IL, in the former channel of the Ohio River (8K years ago) and Beall Woods is adjacent to the Wabash River. Both locations have several species of spectacular old oaks (300+ years old) such as overcup (Q. lyrata), bur oak (Q. macrocarpa), swamp white […]
Drought in the Prairie State
Had a great time last week with Matt Meko collecting tree-ring samples in Illinois from sites sampled by D. Duvick in 1980. We were joined at Ferne Clyffe St. Park by Justin Maxwell and his crew and and Kankakee St. Park and Starved Rock St. Park by Emma Bialecki (@emmabialecki). We saw some great old growth oak forest though there was a lot of invasive species in some areas. The highlight of the trip for me was sampling at Starved […]
More White River
In addition to sampling live trees, we were able to find a few dead standing snags and downed logs to sample. Hopefully these will help us get farther back in time than the living trees. For more pics see https://plus.google.com/+MatthewTherrell/posts/1yHufupf55b
Lakeport Plantation
If you are into old plantation houses Lakeport Plantation in eastern Arkansas is one of the finest restored examples in that state. A few years ago Dave Stahle and I used tree-rings to date the construction of the main house. It was built almost entirely of bald cypress, and nearly every log was cut in 1858. Check out their website . For more pics see: Lakeport Plantation
Climate and the Mfecane
The mfecane is thought to be a massive upheaval and devastation of Nguni tribal chiefdoms in the second decade of the 19th century in what is now KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape of South Africa. We show that pervasive cycles of drought and cold periods in southern Africa are significantly amplified and extended by volcanic eruptions and that, in particular, the eruption of Tambora in 1815 triggered a prolonged and extreme climatic event which bears all of the characteristics ascribed […]
Response of Non- Native Invasive Plants to Large Scale Wind Damage
The objective of this study was to determine if a large-scale wind disturbance facilitated the invasion of forest interiors by non-native invasive plant species in the northern portion of LaRue Pine Hills – Otter Pond Research Natural Area in the Shawnee National Forest of southern Illinois. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3375/043.033.0309
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