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slash UK slash AI for people. Welcome to Science Talk, the weekly podcast of Scientific American

posted on November 18, 2009. I'm Steve Merski. In this episode, we'll hear

about trees and water, with tree ring expert Kevin Anchikaitis and Water Maven, Colin Chartris.

Plus, we'll test your knowledge about some recent science in the news. First up, Kevin

Anchikidas. He's a researcher in the tree ring lab at the Lamont

Dowardy Earth Observatory, part of Columbia University's Earth Institute. A group of science

writers visited the observatory just north of New York City on the west side of the Hudson River

on October 29th, and we all got a brief brimmer on tree rings and what they tell us.

The raw materials for what we do are, of course, trees and their rings.

And what you're actually looking at when you see a tree ring is two different types of cells.

So in the early part of the growth season, a tree puts on rather large, thin-walled cells.

And these cells are used for conducting water.

So these are the cells that allow water to come from the roots up into the canopy.

Tree makes use of this for photosynthesis.

And then photosynthates, the food for the plant, as well as hormones, come

down, back down the trunk, and participate in forming these cells. So the first cells

the tree puts on during the year are these thin, wall, somewhat larger cells, and they have

...