David is my little tree man scientist. He gets up almost every morning and heads off to school, where he's the only grad student with his own office, which is also bigger than everyone else's. I'm sure he's the object of many's office envy, but he's rather proud of himself. And I am too.

Lily and I visited him recently in this large, lonely office, and Lily found that his work is fun, because tree core mounts make for very good swords.

When David's not defending himself against mount-weilding toddlers, he's measuring tree rings in a microscope, recording data, and overall being a complete nerd.



What does this accomplish? Good question. David is a tree ring nerd (and I seriously say nerd with all the love in the world) because it helps him - and others - understands what goes on in forests.

Though I'm not knowledgable enough to comment much on what the current research hopes to accomplish, an example of what tree ring science can explain (and was the topic of his previously published research) is gap releases. Pretty much, studying the effects of trees falling down in a forrest to the trees around it.

Most importantly, David get's to play with a microscope.