Dendrochronology and Environmental Change

Dendrochronology provides opportunities to relate environmental change to growth patterns of trees and can show students both how scientists investigate the past and how the environment can affect trees. At a small rural high school in the Deep South where forestry is a major industry, twenty five high school students participated in a mixed methods research project to determine if dendrochronology would promote understanding of environmental change. The intervention consisted of a ten day unit that employed a set of learning activities to explore environmental change, climate change, and tree growth and concluded with student-created investigations of various aspects of the relationship of trees to their environment. The Wilcoxon matched-pair signed rank test showed significant growth in student performance (P < .01) and was supported by qualitative evaluation that revealed that the students greatly enjoyed creating their own investigations. These activities can provide a new way to engage students in learning about environmental change of the past and the present.