Comments on: Strip Bark at Upper Wright Lakes Foxtails

By: The Englishman

The Englishman — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 17:13:17 +0000

On relooking at the log it might be a fungal attack coming in rather than out, it is easier to see on the scan than in real life! It is so even I think the tree was infected back then and has carried on growing with it – I don’t have the history of this log -(I buy and sell firewood and so this was just one at random out of the pile.)

My point was that it is helpful to look at trees in cross section to visualise how a core relates to the whole picture. Of course I’m not suggesting we start cutting down bristlecones but a visit to a lumber yard is a simple way to see hundreds of different cross sections for the last hundred years or so. And easy to see how they have reacted to various damages etc, a point Steve was trying to model elsewhere.

By: steven mosher

steven mosher — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 17:05:51 +0000

RE 12.

What would fun is to sample this tree from every degree of the compass and do a reconstruction
pretending it were 360 different trees.

By: KevinUK

KevinUK — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 12:35:09 +0000

Steve,

Yet another significant find and further nail in the Mannian hockey stick coffin.

Well done. Please keep up this excellent audit work. The Team really are looking more and more foolish with each of your finds.

KevinUK

By: bender

bender — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 11:47:49 +0000

This looks like a blue-stain fungus spreading from the bark inward through the outer sapwood, possibly after a bark beetle attack. In which case the event would have occurred recently, not 20 years ago. (Note the inner margin of the discoloration crosses over some rings, and does not follow any one annual ring.) The low growth rate at 270° is also the focus of the discoloration. Maybe this is where the fungal/beetle attack was concentrated? Would need more info to confirm.

The tree ring-width profiles in the different quadrants would like fairly similar, despite what the eye sees as major difference. i.e. There would be strong high-frequency coherence and some modest low-frequency decoherence.

By: MrPete

MrPete — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 10:45:05 +0000

If we treat the “top” as zero degrees, and go ’round clockwise (0…90…180…270…360), do you know what ranges were damaged in some way? Eyeballing it, the tree appears to have had twenty years of uncharacteristically even growth for twenty years, except for the obvious bulge from 290-340.

What’s the history? I’m no expert and have asked nobody. Uninformed guess: a uniformly stressful event (fire?), then the tree received good care (water, food, light) for twenty years.

By: The Englishman

The Englishman — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 09:17:25 +0000

Out of interest I have put a scan of one of my logs up which shows the tree rings from a bark damaged tree .
This a Holm Oak – Quercus ilex – where something happened twenty years ago. It is interesting to imagine what a core taken from different angles would show, and it illustrates how different quadrants of the tree reacted to the bark damage. The bark now, or at least until the tree was cut down, looks healthy all the way round.
Large image is here.

By: Geoff Sherrington

Geoff Sherrington — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 00:14:21 +0000

Re #7 Sam sorry, I first read it as “I want a porny for Christmas”.

By: windansea

windansea — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 23:41:01 +0000

Note, I want a pony for Christmas.

you are in luck, a new study shows that pony gifting has increased since 1985

By: Sam Urbinto

Sam Urbinto — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 23:22:02 +0000

Note, I want a pony for Christmas.

By: windansea

windansea — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 23:18:32 +0000

note hockey stick in figure 4 in above link