By Marlene CimonsNeil Pederson's introduction to tree rings came from a "sweet and kindly" college instructor, who nevertheless was "one of the most boring professors I'd ever experienced," Pederson said. "I swore tree rings off then and there." But they kept coming back to haunt him.As a future forest ecologist, he needed to learn more about the history of forests. So he read countless articles in graduate school extolling the importance of tree rings in unraveling a forest's past. Ultimately, "I fell in love with the beauty and wealth of information found in tree rings," he said. "Since then, tree rings have revealed to me the absolute resiliency of trees and forests. I'm hooked." Today, he and his colleagues are using the data inherent in these ancient sources of nature to better understand the impact of climate change and carbon dynamics on forests, all the more valuable because data from long-lived trees can reach back decades, even centuries. This is far longer than modern satellite imagery, carbon dioxide measurements, and computer models, whose high-tech information gathering only stretches back about 30 years."What tree rings can do is enhance those records," Pederson said. "The satellite record … represents a small portion of the life of a tree, let alone the 'life' of a forest. Further, it only captures the weather 'norm' for a region and, as we are learning, climate varies over time. The weather norms or averages on your nightly weather reports are based on 30-year means. So, while satellite records are good at covering space, they might be limited in what they can tell us about forests due to shortness of these records."