Lagoonscapes

The Venice Journal of Environmental Humanities

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

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Abstract

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.


open access | peer reviewed

Submitted: Oct. 26, 2025 | Accepted: Nov. 19, 2025 | Published Dec. 18, 2025 | Language: en

Keywords Newspapers • Drought • Climate history • Natural and human archives • Dendrochronology

Copyright © 2025 Francis Ludlow, Eva Jobbová, David M. Brown, Christopher Morris. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

Permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/LGSP/2785-2709/2025/02/009