wood that filled in the gap.
That allowed him to fill in the gap and
make the first dendroarchiological sequence for dating tree rings.
And so that the discipline of dendrochronology was born.
And since then, It's going all around the world.
There are tree ring labs all around the world doing all kinds of research using
tree rings, because there are so many things that the tree rings can tell us.
It's not just about dating archeological sites,
although this still, there are people here carrying on Douglas's work.
There are people here doing southwestern dendro archeology.
I work in the Mediterranean, but
there are also people here reconstructing climate, reconstructing drought.
Looking at those ringed patterns and
finding years where it got really tough for the trees.
There are people here who do fire ecology.
And this is a tree with a fire scar.
So you see that up until this point in time,
that this tree was having a very nice life, just growing along.
And then suddenly, a fire comes in.
The fire would have come from this direction.
It's damaged the tree, but
it hasn't killed it, cuz this side of the tree was protected.
And so what the tree does is, although this part is dead, the rest of it's alive.
And it's continues to heal and grow and
it heals right at the waveband and seals off that scar.
And you can cut down a cross section through a tree and find five or
six or seven of these scars buried in a tree.
So what that allows you to do is you count your tree rings, and
you find the exact date of when that fire event occurred.
You count the tree rings, and you find the exact date of the next fire.