Tree-Rings as Text: Reading the Climatic and Life History of an Irish Oak

Parallels readings of natural and human archives offer many advantages in environmental history. Such literacy is best fostered at the undergraduate level onward. We thus offer a teachable case study that focuses on how an oak sample prepared for dendrochronological analysis at Queen’s University Belfast can be “read” and placed in dialogue with the Irish Drought Impact Database. This demonstrates the value of the oak record but also the need for its critical interpretation. It opens questions about how human management shaped its environment whilst growing in the Botanic Gardens Park, Belfast.