November 1, 2006

NSLS Tree Ring Research Featured in Nature News

Research conducted by Pascale Poussart and Satish Myneni from Princeton University in collaboration with Tony Lanzirotti at the NSLS was featured on Nature’s news website in mid-September. Their paper, published in the September 9, 2006, edition of Geophysical Research Letters, describes how to estimate age and growth in tropical ringless trees using synchrotron x-rays. Whereas trees in temperate climates can be characterized according to the number of rings in their trunks, most tropical trees are ringless and require extensive measurements in order to determine their age. The Princeton team and Lanzirotti demonstrated a simpler and quicker method for this process at beamline X26A, making the first x-ray microprobe synchrotron record of calcium from a ringless Miliusa velutina tree from Thailand. Trees take up calcium during their main growing season and the synchrotron research revealed annual peaks of the mineral going back to 1909.

Click here for the Nature article (subscription required): http://www.nature.com/news/2006/060911/full/060911-15.html

BNL staff and users onsite can view the article here: http://intranet.bnl.gov/newsclips/clips_read.asp?RecID=669