Historic harvesting and mortality from air pollution drastically reduced the abundance of red spruce (Picea rubens), a late-successional dominant of cool-temperate forests of the northeastern U.S. and southeastern Canada, leaving few opportunities to understand the natural growth and disturbance responses of this species. Timbers salvaged from the Moosilauke Ravine Lodge, a structure built from trees harvested in the late 1930s, provided an opportunity to reconstruct radial growth patterns and dynamics of a former old-growth red spruce stand located in Jobildunc Ravine on Mount Moosilauke in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Ravine Lodge tree-ring series were compared with data from a 255-year-old red spruce found living in Jobildunc Ravine, from the Nancy Brook site in the White Mountains, and from other dendroecological studies across the region. Ring counts provide minimum tree ages of 187–286 years for timbers from Jobildunc Ravine, suggesting they established between the mid-Seventeenth and mid-Eighteenth Centuries. Dendroecological analyses identified early decades of suppression in the understory followed by 2–5 growth releases and 2–4 growth declines for each sample, indicating occasional, small-scale disturbances of the canopy before the 1930s. A growth decline in 1834–1835 coincides with an outbreak of spruce budworm (Choristoneura fumiferana) in eastern Canada, perhaps reflecting a regional defoliation event that occurred as far south as Mount Moosilauke. This study illustrates the insights that can be gained from wood from historic structures on the dynamics of now-scarce old-growth red spruce forests.

An international summer course in dendrochronology, “Tree Rings, Climate, Natural Resources, and Human Interaction”, was held in Amman, Jordan, in summer 2023. Drs. Ramzi Touchan and David M. Meko from the University of Arizona Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research were course instructors. The course, with 10 students from Jordan, Algeria, Tunisia, Pakistan, Greece, and the USA, included training in core-sample collection, sample preparation, crossdating, detrending, and climate signal identification. Students applied their training in group precipitation reconstruction projects. Fifty-two Pinus halepensis core samples were collected at Dibeen Forest Reserve, Jordan, which were used to develop a tree-ring chronology (1925–2022) and then used for the reconstruction models. Two reconstructions extended precipitation for Dibeen using: (1) measured October-April precipitation data (R²adj. = 0.63), and (2) gridded November-April precipitation data (R²adj. = 0.61). A third reconstruction used the Dibeen chronology and three low-elevation tree-ring chronologies in Cyprus to extend gridded December–April precipitation data for the eastern Mediterranean region (R²adj. = 0.55). Results from the class projects demonstrated the success of reconstruction techniques in regions with sparse measured climate data and tree-ring chronologies. Future training classes in these regions will also promote the importance of understanding historic climate variability, which is essential for water resource managers and planners.