Passport to Texas

Passport to Texas from Texas Parks and Wildlife

A tree is a living history book. By analyzing its rings, researchers can determine the climate conditions of each year the tree was alive.

Malcolm Cleaveland is a professor emeritus of geosciences at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. He and a team of researchers are trying to determine the climate patterns of central Texas.

On a recent day, they take samples from bald cypress trees in Guadalupe River State Park.

[Sounds of collecting samples]

That’s the researchers boring holes into the trees. It takes a while to collect the samples.

[Sounds of collecting samples]

Some of the trees aren’t old enough. Others, like this one have tree rot.

Well, Richard, thank you for trying…it’s all I can do…We have now bored this thing from almost every conceivable angle.

Cleaveland says if the results show that long droughts are fairly common, it will re-emphasize the need for water conservation.

These people who say we don’t need to conserve water cause we can pump as much as we want to out of the aquifer, they’re crazy. That’s the height of insanity. If we experienced a drought like the mega drought like 40 years of almost continuous hard drought pumping ground water would be an end game that would not work.

That’s our show. We had research and writing help from Gretchen Mahan. For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti

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