Field observation can date land abandonment from tree growth records

Evidence

Higher up the creeklet I encounter an abandoned farm. I try to read, from the age of the young jackpines marching across an old field, how long ago the luckless farmer found out that sand plains were meant to grow solitude, not corn. Jackpines tell tall tales to the unwary, for they put on several whorls of branches each year, instead of only one. I find a better chronometer in an elm seedling that now blocks the barn door. Its rings date back to the drouth of 1930. Since that year no man has carried milk out of this barn. — Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, 207

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Material artifacts left on abandoned land encode departed human hopes — Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac: With Other…, 208; Forest age and composition changes cluster along disturbance-history boundaries — Tom Wessels, Forest Forensics: A Field Guide to…, 30; Fencing material and type date pasture abandonment and its grazing livestock — Tom Wessels, Forest Forensics: A Field Guide to…, 55 (+1 more)