Department of Geography and Planning’s Appalachian Tree Ring Lab

An Accurate "Log-ing" of Time

SciWorks Radio is a production of 88.5 WFDD and SciWorks, the Science Center and Environmental Park of Forsyth County, located in Winston-Salem. Follow Shawn on Twitter @SCIFitz.

Scientists use many tools to put a date on events of the past. A geologist can use relative dating, comparing rock layer ages against one another. Archeologists may use carbon 14 for an absolute date. Climatologists can access over a million years of climate data using ice cores. If you want to know when a historical log cabin in the mountains was built, you use dendrochronology.