Checking out a successful core!
As part of our broader impacts for the Continental N grant, we decided to participate in K-State’s Girls Researching Our World (GROW) program. GROW is run by the K-State Office for the Advancement of Women in Science and Engineering (KAWSE) and introduces regional middle school girls to various STEM fields through one-day workshops and summer camps.
Our session focused on introducing the girls to dendrochronology, including sampling trees, processing cores, and measuring/graphing ring widths.
Allison Walker and I took our GROW girls across campus to identify and core trees, and measure their height and diameter.
Allison and I had a great time, and the girls (and their camp mentors!) enjoyed coring trees and learning about dendrochronology! The weather even cooperated, which is impressive in Kansas.
We got a number of really good cores – many reaching all the way to the center of the pines we chose!
The sampling the GROW students performed is actually identical to the protocol we use for the Continental N sampling, and these cores would have made excellent additions to the Continental N dataset, if they hadn’t been landscaped trees on campus…
Instead, we let the girls take their cores home to show their families.
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Laci M. Gerhart 