The article talks about what a year-round ring is, how it is formed, where it can be found, what kind of science is involved in the study of rings.
Trees and life
Life on our planet has formed and exists due to many factors, and one of them is the suitable gas composition of the atmosphere. Or rather, the presence of a sufficient amount of oxygen. They provide us with plants that absorb carbon dioxide exhaled by most living things. Currently, most developed and civilized countries strictly monitor the state of their forests, including creating national parks where you can meet very old trees. They are interesting not only from an aesthetic point of view, but also because scientists, by studying them, gain knowledge about bygone times, and the age of the trees itself is determined using tree rings. But what is an annual ring, why does it form, and where besides trees are there more? This is what we will understand in this article.
Definition
Annual rings, or annual layers, are the regions of cyclical tissue growth in plants and some other species of living things, for example, fungi and mollusks. Their appearance is due to climatic temperature differences and some other factors. Now we know what an annual ring is.
But the most characteristic and pronounced annual rings are observed in woody plants of a perennial type. Especially those that grow in the zone of moderate latitude, when periods of summer-spring growth of cambium alternate with dormancy in the autumn-winter part of the year. If we talk about the appearance of the rings, then each of them is divided into two parts: dark and light. Conifers are interesting in that their annual rings are most clearly visible, since the wood that formed later has a pronounced dark shade. Now we know what an annual ring is. Their study is engaged in such a science as dendrochronology.
Dendrochronology
Dendrochronology is a scientific discipline that deals with the dating of events, natural phenomena and archaeological finds based on studies of tree rings of wood or other biological remains that possess them.
For example, this method is most often used to determine the age of some objects or buildings made of wood by tree rings.
With what kind of science and what it does, we figured out. Now let's look at how annual rings form.
Education process
As we already know, they appear in those trees that grow in areas with pronounced seasonality. Simply put, in summer and winter they do not grow the same due to temperature changes and other conditions. This leads to the fact that the layer of wood growing in the winter differs from the summer one in the mass of signs: color, density, texture, etc. If we talk about visual manifestations, then on the transverse saw cut of a tree trunk you can see a clear structure in the form of concentric rings.
What can be determined by annual rings?
This is mainly age. Each ring corresponds to one year, according to its thickness and texture it is possible to judge what year it was from the climatic point of view: approximate temperature, amount of precipitation, their frequency and so on. This method is also used to determine the age of some ancient wooden products: they are sawn, they look at the number of rings, and then they are compared with a sample whose age is known. Thus, you can find out when the tree was cut, which served as the material for the item.
Animal world
As already mentioned, tree rings are found not only in trees, but also in the animal kingdom. You can find them in those tissues or skeleton structures that grow continuously, but at the same time are subject to climatic effects, seasonal temperature changes. These are scales, bones and fins of some fish species, shells of mollusks of various types, beaks and bones of birds, animal horns, and bones of some mammals. So now we know what annual rings are in biology. According to them, scientists define everything the same as in the case of trees: age, climate features of that period and so on.