The College of Wooster Tree Ring Lab

The College of Wooster Tree Ring Lab is a group of faculty, staff, and undergraduate student researchers, founded by Dr. Greg Wiles in 1998 in the College’s Earth Sciences department, who study tree rings and their relationship to archaeology, climate, and geology. Whether the projects are for sophomore or summer research, or for students’ senior Independent Study theses, the Tree Ring Lab utilizes dendrochronology to date historical structures in Ohio (dendroarchaeology) and reconstruct paleoclimate (dendroclimatology). Our goal is to assemble long tree-ring chronologies from oaks by sampling both living trees and old wood. Read our brochure for more information regarding this process!

Research has been conducted by the Tree Ring Lab in Alaska, Ohio, and Russia, and has been featured at many annual meetings of the Geological Society of America and in various other publications.