The decline of lead in tree rings of Carya spp. in urban Atlanta, GA, USA

Abstract

Abstract. Lead (Pb) concentrations in wood ring segments of Carya spp. in two urban forests in Atlanta, GA, have decreased approximately 20 percent in the last decade. This pattern is consistent with reduced atmospheric Pb over the same period. We have determined that changes in Pb concentrations in wood of urban hickory trees dramatically documents the historical periods of early urbanization, the addition of Pb to gasoline, and the recent period of restricted use of leaded gasoline.

Element analysis of tree rings in pedunculate oak heartwood: an indicator of historical trends in the soil chemistry, related to atmospheric deposition

“…Tree-ring analysis proved to be more or less in accordance with historical events involving the soil, including: i) contamination of the environment by different elements, in particular Cu, Pb, Zn, Mn, Al, Fe, B, Ni, Cd, generally coming from industrial areas, coal-burning power generators or vehicle exhaust fumes. Species involved were conifers (Robitaille, 1981;Baes and McLaughlin, 1984;Guyette and McGinnes, 1987;Guyette et al, 1991;Zayed et al, 1992) as well as broadleaved species (Vroblesky and Yanosky, 1990;Stewart et al, 1991) including oaks (Herrmann et al, 1978; Kardell and Larsson, 1978;Queirolo et al, 1990;Yanosky and Vroblesky, 1992); ii) fertilization (McClenahen et al, 1989;Kashuba, 1992); iii) acidification of the soil, generally ascribed to atmospheric deposition (Meisch et al, 1986;Arp and Manasc, 1988; Ragsdale and Berish, 1988;Scherbatskoy and Matusiewicz, 1988;Bondietti et al, 1989; Bondietti and McLaughlin, 1992 (Okada et al, 1988;Frelich et al, 1989;De Visser, 1992). Some macronutrients are often partly remobilized from older annual rings and transferred towards younger and more active parts of the wood (Ogner and Bjor, 1988;Häsänen and Huttunen, 1989;Peterson and Anderson, 1990;Chun and Hui-yi, 1992;De Visser, 1992).…”

Can tree-ring chemistry reveal absolute dates for past volcanic eruptions?

“…The multi-elemental analyses of tree rings to produce dated sequences of palaeoenvironmental elemental change (dendrochemistry), has previously been used almost solely as a tool for reconstructing patterns of anthropogenic pollution [4,9,21,23,28,35,48,49,53,55,58,73,75,81,84,87,90,91,95,96]. However this approach can readily be applied to the volcanic signal research question.…”