Dave McWethy, Co-Director of the Paleoecology lab at Montana State University, studies and teaches about environments changing over time.
“We have our charcoal microscopes here and we have our pollen microscopes over here,” McWethy said.
McWethy is one of a dozen authors across several disciplines that recently published their findings with the National Academy of Sciences journal, ‘Proceedings’, which included the discovery of 30 preserved white bark pine tree stumps in a more than 5,000-year-old ice patch.
“There was such good preservation of the entire trees we were able to build a year to year chronology of the climate up on the plateau 5,000 years ago,” McWethy said.
These ancient trees give insight into a warmer climate of the past, and possibly the future too.
“Those conditions that supported those forests to grow are now back with us again, but occurring much more rapidly,” McWethy said.
The tree stumps were found 700 feet above current tree line, and their location gives some hope to the species that has been devastated by a number of factors including beetle kill, fungus and a warming climate.
“This research suggests that white bark pine is a very resilient species and while the distribution of white park pine may shrink it’s probably going to find places it can keep going,” McWethy said.
The discovery was only made possible by melting ice.
“We wish they weren’t melting away but it is an exciting time just in the sense that we can discover things we didn’t know,” McWethy said.
Part of their findings in the region include evidence of humans hunting animals on the plateau.
“It’s really showing how important these areas have been for tribal communities for many many hundreds of years, and in some cases thousands of years,” McWethy said.
The group plans to continue their research into even more remote ice patches in Beartooths to see what additional cultural and environmental materials turn up.
