What if the walls of a historic log cabin could tell you not just when it was built, but what the climate was like hundreds of years ago?
That’s exactly the question driving the work of University of Louisville researcher Dr. Megan Rochner, whose fieldwork is part of Project 2: Paleo-Perspectives, one of the core research initiatives within CLIMBS. In this video, she and her team take us to Owingsville, Kentucky, where science and history meet.
By extracting small core samples from the logs of an early 1800s cabin, her team is able to “read” tree rings—natural records that capture year-by-year snapshots of temperature, rainfall, and drought going back centuries. Because old-growth forests are now rare in Kentucky, these preserved historic structures are invaluable. Each log is essentially a climate archive hiding in plain sight.
In the video, you’ll see exactly how the samples are collected in the field, why certain logs are chosen over others, and how researchers use the patterns inside the wood to reconstruct Kentucky’s environmental past.
