All of the summaries of the books we have read include (many) links. Links evaporate. I check them when I post the summary and randomly go back in over time to check. If you find a broken link, please let me know via a comment or a direct email. Let me know which link was broken and I will fix it, replace it, or remove it.

The author’s website can be a useful place to visit. Rather interestingly, although she speaks English quite fluently and I’m sure they make her speak English at the University of Arizona where she teaches and SOME of her website is in English, Trouet is Belgian and her website is actively peppered with her native Dutch.

She has a tab called podcasts and there are a number of links to podcasts. Most likely any of them would be interesting to listen to. I listened to bits of a couple of the podcasts and they are very good but are mostly sort of straightforward talking. A reasonable expectation, but sometimes I want something a bit more exciting.

It is perhaps me, or perhaps the internet, but I couldn’t really find any videos of her talking. I did, however, find this one podcast that is pretty fast paced with lots of jokes. It is called The Fellowship of the Tree Rings and begins with two jokes. The second one is three tree-ring scientists walk into a bar. (I won’t spoil the first joke for you.) And if the opening line of the second joke sounds familiar, that would be because it is the title of chapter nine. This 30-minute podcast has the three scientists on air talking about their joint work on the project that combined Florida Key tree ring data with Caribbean shipwreck data and turned up a story on hurricanes, piracy, and power in the 1700s.

Mostly what we talked about related to the mechanics, so to speak, of dendrochronology. I found three resources, all with multiple pages and assorted links.

A. The University of Arizona Laboratory of Tree-ring Research. The ‘about’ page has a page on ‘About Tree Rings’ which is done largely as a series of FAQs and includes information and images of how rings form and the information they encode.

B. The Professor Dave Explains series. He has a set of five approximately 5-10 minute youtube videos focused on dendrochronology. I’ve listed the talks below. We’ve watched other videos in his series and today I spent some time looking up – who is the Professor Dave anyway? The answer is here. Rather interestingly, his BA (in Chemistry) is from Carlton College, which is the third major resouce I found.

1 Introduction to Dendrochronology 5:21

2 Core Principles and Concepts of Dendrochronology 10:42

3 The Structure of Wood and Ring Anomalies 9:16

4 Techniques for Sampling and Analysis in Dendrochronology 13:04

5 Applications of Dendrochronology 7:22

C. Carleton College has a set of “six publicly available labs, geared for community college and undergraduate instructors and their students, that tap into the excitement of launching an expedition while introducing students to groundbreaking tree-ring studies that have had important societal impact. Tree-Ring Expeditions (TREX) immerses students in the field of dendrochronology and allows them to experience science as a process, as a scientist would.”

I have put in a link to the first of the six labs – launching an expedition. This lab starts with a module on: what is dendrochronology? The modules include video clips and assignments.

Beyond the three broad reasources, we watched this video of a scientist coring a tree in the field, mounting the cored sample, and talking about how the information is used.
Peter Brown Dendrochronology and Climate 7:24

Trouet opens her book with the use of dendochronology to determine whether a particular Stradivarius violin was real or not. I couldn’t find any video clips describing the controversy initially, however, here’s a link to a 2017 article discussing the use (and misuse) of dendrochronology in advancing the debate. ‘Advancing,’ because as the article underscores, the debate continues. Many of the links within the article seem to be broken but there is a link to a 25-minute clip by Peter Ratcliff on the dendrochronology of the Messiah.

A more or less contemporary clip about wood; grain; and Stradivarius and Guarnerius violins: Stradivarius and Guarnerius Violins: The “Lost” Trees goes through the role of wood grain and tree ring thickness in creating the best sound.

And then, just a short clip of using dendrochonology to date historical portraits. National portrait gallery Ian Tyers 2:47

I thought this hour long presentation would be informative, however, there seem to have been some technical problems that make it hard to hear. Still you might find it interesting. Kessler – Tree-Ring Dating Techniques for the Desert Basin of Southern and Central Arizona 54:56