What Trees Remember: Climate, Water, and Change in Western Maryland

Trees are invaluable record-keepers of the past. Since their annual growth is intrinsically related to a combination of environmental factors, tree ring data can be used like a Rosetta Stone. Dr. Karen King will demonstrate how her research in biogeography and climate change is informed by tree-ring data. We will focus on regional examples from western Maryland to learn what tree rings can tell us about temperature, hydroclimate, and ecological variability.

Dr. Karen King, an assistant professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, runs the Tree Ring Lab in the Department of Geography and Sustainability. She holds both a BS and an MS from Frostburg State University and a PhD from the University of Idaho. As a biogeographer, Karen’s research interests focus on Quaternary landscape dynamics and paleoenvironmental reconstruction from intra-annual to multi-century time scales. She uses dendrochronology and spatial analysis as research tools to investigate landscape‐scale dynamics. Her research integrates present‐day climatic and ecological processes with those that functioned in the past and those that are likely to be altered in the near future due to human‐induced changes.