THE USE OF ROBOTICS IN DERIVING HIGH RESOLUTION CLIMATE/ENVIRONMENTAL INFORMATION FROM TREE RING CELLULOSE

Dendrochronology and dendroclimatology have traditionally offered some of the best opportunities to derive unequivocal secular trends in climate and environmental change. As climate models become increasingly sophisticated, the need for increasingly higher resolution boundary conditions has become more critical than ever. Recent advances in robotic micromilling technology permit dramatic increases in high-resolution recovery of details stored in the stable isotope values of tree rings. Custom designed robotic micromilling equipment permits sampling with submicrometer accuracy. Because these computer sampled tree rings can be divided into dozens of samples per year, individual precipitation events may be derived from variation in carbon, hydrogen and oxygen isotope isotope values. Additionally, our milling techniques provide the capability to sample rings that may be difficult if not impossible to sample previously (i.e. narrow and irregular rings).

We present stable isotope data from the boreal forest of Saskatchewan and a temperate forest of central New York State, each sampled by a variety of traditional techniques that are compared to cellulose that was sampled robotically. Wavelet time-series analyses of the secular trends exemplify the differences in the interpretation of such time series records. Such advances are particularly important for reconstructing climate and paleoweather records at the highest resolution possible.

Micromilling provides the potential for resolving variation in synoptic patterns and large storm frequency. By coupling this new understanding of meteorology with high-resolution analytical capabilities provided by advances in robotics, we stand to gain significant new understanding of climate and meteorological variability over the Holocene. In locations that present well-preserved material, we can extend our understanding of climate change even further back into Earth history.