Quietly chronicling everything from the rise and fall of the Mongol Empire to the construction of both humble and stately buildings and boats, trees are global and local environmental historians that can reveal events long faded from human memory and documents. In celebration of the Jewish New Year for Trees, Tu B’Sheva and to bring the lesson even closer to home, Dr. Pederson will discuss how tree ring cores taken from Greenwich’s National Historic Landmark Bush-Holley house have helped to reveal its construction history. The event is co-sponsored by the Bruce Museum, the Greenwich Historical Society, the Greenwich Reform Synagogue and the Greenwich Tree Conservancy.
Neil Pederson, PhD, is Research Assistant Professor in the Tree Ring Laboratory at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University. He grew up in snow-bound central NY State where he spent considerable time in the Adirondack Mountains. Between his B.S. and M.S. degrees in forest ecology, he worked in the longleaf pine forests of southern Georgia, hardwood forests of northern Vermont and the forests of Mongolia and Russia before focusing on eastern United States forests for his dissertation. Neil taught at Eastern Kentucky University for five years in the department of biological sciences before taking his current position at Columbia. His primary research interest is the interaction between climate and forest dynamics in diverse, temperate forests, and he has initiated research on the broadleaf forests of the eastern United States, Turkey and Bhutan.
Date: Thursday, January 24, 2013, 6:30 to 8:30 pm (lecture starts at 7 pm).
(snow date: January 29)
Greenwich Historical Society, Vanderbilt Education Center
39 Strickland Road, Cos Cob, CT 06807
Admission is free but reservations are suggested.
Please call 203-869-6899, Ext. 10.
Admission to this event is free but reservations are suggested. Space is limited. Please call 203-869-6899 or visit http://greenwichhistory.org/adult.php#tree for reservations.
